
aass_LBM£ 

Book. .^''-" 



The Parent's Library 

Nine Volumes, Uniformly Bound. 12 mo. 
Cloth. Per Volume, $1.50 



First Steps in Child Training 

By PROFESSOR M. V. O'SHEA 

The Trend of the Teens 

By PROFESSOR M. V. O'SHEA 

The Faults of Childhood and Youth 

By PROFESSOR M. V. O'SHEA 

Everyday Problems in Child Training 

By PROFESSOR M. V. O'SHEA 

Putting Young America in Tune 

How to Teach the Child Appreciation 
of Mu«iic 

By HENRIETTE WEBER 

The Home Guide to Good Reading 

With Notes 

By PROFESSOR DAVID HARRISON 
STEVENS 

The Proper Feeding of Infants 

By W. H. GALLAND. M. D. 

Diseases of Infancy and Childhood 

By W. H. GALLAND, M. D. 

Maternity and Infant Care 

The Liives of Mothers and Children, 

How "We Can Save Them 

By W. H. GALLAND, M. D. 




TliK AUVKNT OF THE TKENS. 



gbe parent's Uibrarg 
The 

Trend of the Teens 






Mt V;0'SHEA 



Professor of Education, The University of Wisconsin 

and 

Educational Director, 

Mother's Magazine and Home Life 



CHICAGO 

FREDERICK J. DRAKE & CO. 

PUBLISHERS 






^^'^ 



Copyrig-ht, 1920 

By B>edoritk J. Drake & Co. 

ChicasTo 



All Riijhts Reserved 



XLbc parent*6 OLtbrari? 

A series of practical books relating to the care and' culture 
of the young, published under the editorial supervision of 
Profess'^r M. V. O'Shea of the University of Wisconsin, Educa- 
tional Director, and Mr. Paul E. Watson, Editorial Director, 
of Mother's Magazine and Home Life, in cooperation with 
which magazine this Library has been prepared. 



FOREWORD 

Tko anthor of this volume has served for many 
years as educational director of M other ^s Maga- 
zine and Home Life and also as chairman of the 
department of education of the National Con- 
gress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associa- 
tions. During these years he has discussed a 
large number of problems of child training with 
parents and teachers whom he has addressed, and 
who have taken advantage of the opportunity 
offered by the Personal Service Bureau of 
Mother's Magazine and Home Life to seek coun- 
sel and assistance in the rearing of their children. 
They have freely sought the author's advice and 
they have given him their experiences in employ- 
ing various methods in the instruction and dis- 
cipline of their children. It has been his custom 
to select the more fundamental and important 
questions asked by parents and teachers and sub- 
mit them for investigation to groups of advanced 
students engaged in the study of child nature and 
education. It has generally turned out that the 
author has made practical suggestions to those 
who have consulted him, and they have in most 
cases made a trial of these suggestions and have 



8 FOREWORD 

reported the results to the author. In this way 
a great many concrete instances illustrating char- 
acteristic traits of childhood and youth have been 
accumulated, and the outcome of different meth- 
ods of dealing with them has been accurately 
recorded. In the preparation of this volume the 
author has chosen for discussion the more vital 
of the problems which have been treated in the 
manner indicated, and he has suggested how 
these may best be solved under the conditions 
existing in different types of homes, schools and 
communities. 

The author has kept constantly in mind that 
most parents and teachers are neither familiar 
with nor interested in technical psychology, 
biology, or hygiene. They are concerned with the 
immediate and pressing problems of guiding chil- 
dren in their intellectual, physical, ethical and 
temperamental development. They wish to un- 
derstand why children act in certain ways and 
how they can most effectively divert them from 
wrong action. Parents and teachers are so en- 
grossed with the concrete activities of childhood 
and youth that they have little time to consider 
academic questions pertaining either to the nature 
of children or to their training; and consequently 
the author has avoided practically all merely 
theoretical exposition in this volume. He has 
confined the discussion throughout to typical situ- 
ations which confront most parents continually 



FOREWORD 9 

in the upbringing of their children. He has used 
terms which can be understood by those who have 
had little or no study of psychology, physiology 
and related sciences, though the suggestions for 
child training given herein are based upon data 
derived from these sciences. 

The author has not allowed himself to forget 
at any time that this book is designed for prac- 
titioners who are every hour face to face with 
childhood and youth in the concrete, and who are 
training their children in some way whether right 
or wrong. He has undertaken the difficult task of 
applying science to practice without leading the 
practitioner over the technical ground upon which 
the practice is based. It would have been a sim- 
pler matter to have dwelt principally in the realm 
of theory and only occasionally to have made 
practical application of scientific principles. 

This is one of a series of four volumes pre- 
pared for the Parent's Library. These volumes 
supplement one another and are published simul- 
taneously. The title of each indicates that? it 
deals with particular phases of the training of 
childhood and youth but it has been written with 
relation to the others in the series. The titles of 
the four volumes are: ''First Steps in Child 
Training"; ''Faults of Childhood and Youth"; 
' ' The Trend of the Teens " ; " Every-day Problems 
in Child Training." 

The reader should bear in mind that the aim 



10 FOREWORD 

throughout eaxjh and all of these books has been 
to make the discussion intelligible and practical 
by presenting typical traits of childhood as ex- 
hibited in the ordinary situations of daily life, 
and then endeavoring to explain these traits and 
to indicate how they should be dealt with when 
they are not in accord with the requirements of 
life in the home, in the school and in the com- 
munity. 

M. V. O'Shba. 
The University of Wisconsin. 



TABLE OF CONTBNTS 



CHAPTER 



PA6E 



I The Ceucial Age 13 

II Boy Problems 38 

III Girl Problems 65 

IV When the Tender Passion Appears 95 

V Distractions in American Life 141 

VI The Role op the Father in the Training 

OP Youth 1^^ 

VII The Government of Youth 189 

VIII Questions Frequently Asked by Parents 

AND Teachers 220 

IX Books for Parents • -264 

Index • • • ^ ' ^ 



THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

CHAPTER I 

THE CRUCIAL AGE 

The Seven Ages of Man. — Of the seven ages 
of man, youth is without doubt the most im- 
portant, the most significant, the most difficult 
to comprehend and to handle. So men must have 
always felt, for the literature of the world is 
burdened with the story of this epoch, reciting 
its excesses, its passions, its madnesses, as well 
as its glories and its posibilities. The very term 
*' youth" is for many of us synonymous with joy, 
gladness, exhilaration, courage, hope, endurance 
— all that makes life fresh and enjoyable and 
promising, as well as unstable and erratic. 
** Youth holds no society with grief," says Eurip- 
ides. The artist who wishes to portray light- 
heartedness or optimism or daring chooses youth 
as his symbol. The reformer, too, realizes that 
if he would get his cause adopted he must appeal 
to youth, for then all is plastic and possible. Then 
vision is turned forward and upward. The youth 
longs for a new order of things — for novel ex- 
periences. The old and familiar are too tame 
and commonplace to interest him. The blood of 

13 



14 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

youth is fired with the desire for discovery in 
every field of interest and action. But the mature 
man dislikes a changing world, because this re- 
quires him continually to readjust himself, which 
comes hard when the bones have got their set, 
so to speak. As Bacon puts it, — "Young men 
are fitter for execution than for counsel; and 
fitter for new projects than for settled business. ' ' 
So, too, with Shakespeare: 

''For youth no less becomes 
The light and careless livery that it wears. 
Than settled age his sables, and his weeds 
Importing health and graveness." 
Again, the corrupter of youth, the flatterer, as 
Plutarch calls him, is also aware that youth is 
the time for him to make his appeal. Now the 
com and the weeds, the wheat and the tares are 
springing up together. All sorts of seeds are 
sown in the soul, and when the warmth and mois- 
ture of adolescence comes they are ready to start 
into life. If the weeds and tares are nourished 
they will thrive, and the corn and wheat will be 
choked out, and the flatterer knows this. He 
understands that if the weeds do not get a 
start now they can not gain much strength when 
the springtime is past, and the heat of the sum- 
mer is reached. 

Youth Among Primitive People. — Not only 
have the seers of all times appreciated that youth 
is a period of regeneration, the epoch when the 



THE CRUCIAL AGE 15 

spirit is bom, but nature men have appreciated 
the same fact, as their ceremonials show. They 
have observed that there is an age when the boy 
is being transformed into a man and the girl into 
a woman with extraordinary rapidity, and they 
must be given some serious lessons which will 
make them ready for their new duties. Savage 
life is above all else a life of physical hardship; 
it is in unceasing conflict with crude nature. The 
savage is like an animal among other animals, 
hunting and being hunted, and there are cer- 
tain special qualities which he must possess if 
he would succeed in the struggle. He must en- 
dure physical pain without a murmur. He must 
go for long periods without food. He must face 
danger without flinching. Eastman in his ''Indian 
Boyhood" tells us very vividly how when the 
Indian boy shows the first symptoms of adolescent 
upheaval he is subjected to severe treatment to 
test his staying qualities, and to impress upon 
him the fundamental ideals of his race. The 
boy's teeth are knocked out, blood is drawn from 
his skin, long fasting is required, and grave 
dangers must be faced. 

Familiar Adolescent Phenomena. — Any one 
who has lived with children passing through this 
epoch must have observed the rapid outward 
changes that take place, — the remodeling of the 
features, the expansion of the chest, the altera- 
tion of the voice, and the like. Recent investiga- 



16 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

tion is in a way confirming what people have 
casually observed in their dealing with adolescent 
boys and girls. To begin with, hundreds of 
thousands of children in our own country and 
abroad have been carefully weighed and meas- 
ured from infancy to maturity, and the results 
show markedly accelerated growth during two or 
three years at the onset of . adolescence. The 
bones often feel the impetus of growth first, and 
spring forward more rapidly than the muscles 
which are attached to them, and this sometimes 
produces uneasiness in the individual, or even 
pains," — ''growing" pains. The heart soon re- 
sponds and its working power is increased, so 
that the needs of the rapidly expanding organism 
may be properly attended to. The lungs increase 
rapidly; the digestive system is affected; and 
indeed every vital process seems to feel the stir 
of new life, as it were. The brain could not, of 
course, remain dormant while all the other or- 
gans were undergoing metamorphosis. It is the 
last to receive the adolescent stimulus, but the 
change is most profound when it does come. The 
cerebral tissues are more plastic at this time than 
they were before or will be afterward, due to the 
fact, possibly, that there is an unusually large 
proportion of water in the composition of brain 
cells. Cerebral areas that have lain dormant up 
until this time now make ready for functioning. 
So there are other profound changes which really 



THE CRUCIAI. AGE 17 

make adolescence a kind of second birth spirit- 
ually. 

The First Effect of Adolescent Development. — 
We should expect that the effect of this influx 
of new life would manifest itself in heightened 
activity in every direction. If we may trust 
the testimony of poets and ordinary observers, 
this is generally the case; yet there is a certain 
sense in which quite the opposite seems to be true. 
Present-day conceptions of the physical organism 
as a device for generating and expending energy 
leads us to the view that activity and growth are 
under certain conditions antagonistic processes. 
When an organ is expanding with extraordinary 
rapidity it cannot expend as relatively large an 
amount of energy in action as under normal 
conditions. It may become more responsive to 
stimulation, but it cannot endure so long in any 
activity making heavy drafts on vital force. En- 
ergy may be expended in building the organism, 
or in repairing it, or in warming it; or it may 
be utilized in the accomplishment of work of 
some kind. When it is largely drawn upon at 
one point, however, as for constructive purposes, 
the amount which can be employed at other 
points must be decreased. 

Adolescent Moodiness. — Maudsley, Clouston, 
Starr, Marro, Christopher, and other physicians 
tell us that the nervous system is frequently so 
disturbed at adolescence that insanity results. 



18 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

Melancholia often overtakes the adolescent, and 
so does hysteria and kindred maladies. LaFetra 
says that during this period ^'morbid introspec- 
tion into the physical or mental life may lead to 
hypochondriasis or melancholia. If the normal 
emotions are overactive at the same time, the 
'New England conscience' may be developed, 
making the individual utterly miserable for 
months or years. There may be a religious type 
of melancholia, with dread of having committed 
the unpardonable sin. Conversions are apt to 
take place at this time, or calls to enter the 
ministry, convent, or sisterhood. At times the 
melancholia may be so profound that a suicidal 
tendency is observed. Every year, for trivial 
causes students of both sexes commit suicide. 
Fear of some terrible disease or of early decay 
is one type (hypochondriasis), and this is exag- 
gerated through the agency of quack advertise- 
ments and pamphlets read by the apprehensive 
boy or girl." 

Professor Coe, discussing the tendency of the 
adolescent toward abnormal introspection says 
that ''the highly sensitive adolescent conscience 
is a special feature of the reflectiveness, intro- 
spection, and self-criticism that tends to set in 
somewhat preceding the advent of puberty. The 
absorption of the child-consciousness in objects 
now gives place to self-consciousness destined 
soon to become most intense. Heretofore the 



THE CRUCIAL AGE 19 

child has been to himself merely one object 
among others; he has taken himself objectively. 
But now he discovers himself and this self is 
a quivering mass of sensibility. The things about 
him also get an inner side now, and it is their 
ultimate principles and their hidden relations to 
him that interest him. He can no longer take 
things as they appear; nor can he take anything 
for granted; much less can he believe anything 
merely because other persons do so. Nothing 
short of absolute, undubitable truth, the true 
inwardness, the complete subjectivising of every- 
thing, will satisfy him. Nothing less than abso- 
lutely right principles of conduct can be right at 
all, and everything in himself that falls short of 
absolute demands is hateful to him. Heretofore, 
moral law has been an authority imposing itself 
upon him from outside; now he discovers that 
the law speaks loudest within him. Heretofore 
right conduct has consisted for him in obedience 
to formal rules; now he begins to inspect the 
rules themselves, and to find within himself 
something more exacting and terrible than rules." 
Adolescent Strain and Stress as Portrayed in 
Autobiography. — Some striking examples of 
adolescent strain and stress have been preserved 
for us in autobiography. Marie Bashkirtseff's 
Journal gives a vivid account of her nerve storms 
during this epoch; and Mary McLane's recent 
autobiographical sketch shows something of the 



20 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

same neurotic condition. Mill in his reminis- 
cences tells of his depression at this period. A 
heavy weight which he could in no way throw off 
hung upon his spirit, and for months the oppres- 
sion was so severe that he seriously contemplated 
putting an end to it all. In Robert Elsmere and 
Maggie Tulliver we have typical examples of 
spiritual upheaval during adolescence. Others 
may be found in Tolstoi's ''Childhood, Boyhood, 
Youth"; Loti, "The Story of a Child"; Jeffries, 
"The Story of My Heart," and similar auto- 
biographies. 

Criminal Tendencies in Adolescence. — The un- 
stable condition of the nervous system at this 
time makes the individual specially liable to evil 
suggestion. It is becoming a matter of general 
belief that every person possesses the capacity, 
in a certain sense, to commit crime; or in other 
words, to revert to primitive modes of treating 
the people about him. In every person's life 
there are at times struggles of greater or less 
intensity between lower impulses and the require- 
ments of modern civilized society. If one 's nerv- 
ous mechanism is in good working order, the 
higher promptings will be able to hold the lower 
ones in check ; but in the event of serious nervous 
strain or excitement the lower and more firmly 
fixed impulses are likely to gain the right of 
way. This is precisely what often happens in 
the storm and stress of adolescence, as students 



THE CRUCIAL AGE 21 

of criminology well know. Professor Swift, as 
a result of his studies upon the inmates of the 
Waukesha (Wisconsin) reform school, says that 
''The average age at which 225 boys were taken 
to the Waukesha Reform School was not quite 
13.7 years. This is the time when the largest 
amount of energy is seeking occupation, and 
wise guidance is particularly needed. Yet this 
is exactly what these boys do not get. They are 
left to the chance of the street. At this period 
of life the nerve tissues are in a hyper-irritable 
state, and, as Clouston tells us, certain forms or 
emotional and irrational wilfulness, immorality, 
impulsiveness, and adolescent insanity are not 
uncommon. Escapades at this time do not neces- 
sarily point to a criminal nature. The excessive 
irritability of the nerve centers, to which the 
frequency of nervous disorders at this period 
points, makes them erratically sensitive." 

Why Boys Leave School Early. — When the 
work of the school is formal and disciplinary, the 
chances are that there will be more or less con- 
flict between the teacher and his adolescent boys. 
The question is being constantly asked ''Why do 
boys leave school so early?" and all sorts of 
answers are forthcoming. Perhaps the following 
instance will suggest one cause why some boys, 
at any rate, would rather be out of school than 
in it. In a certain high school in the middle west 
there are 130 pupils, 59 of whom are boys. This 



22 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

is a rather larger proportion of masculinity than 
one finds in most high schools, but the people in 
this community have considerable wealth, and 
they desire that their sons should have the ad- 
vantages of an education. The superintendent of 
schools says that many of the boys would rather 
go to work, but their parents compel them to 
attend school. 

The teachers are women, except the principal, 
who is also superintendent of schools, and who 
teaches one class in physics. The high school 
was built up a year at a time on the elementary 
school, and the teachers grew up with it, most of 
them coming out of the higher grades. They 
have been ambitious to stay in the high school, 
so they have dug away at the subjects they teach, 
until they seem able to prepare their pupils to 
pass examinations. But with hardly an excep- 
tion, their teaching is formal, mechanical, and 
rigidly exact, without life or content. While the 
writer was observing a class in botany in this 
school one day, a boy of eighteen years of age, 
considerably larger than the teacher, became rest- 
less and inattentive, and failed to answer the 
teacher's questions. The work consisted in giv- 
ing the technical names of the parts of plants, 
which had been analyzed with a view to making 
an herbarium. All the work of the class had 
been confined to the learning of technical facts. 
There had been no study of the life of plants. 



THE CRUCIAL AGE 23 

Not a word had been said of their economic 
values, or anything of the kind. 

Tliis particular boy evidently had no interest in 
the technical names for plants, and he not only 
failed to give attention himself, but he distracted 
the attention of those next to him. Early in the 
recitation the teacher called him out before the 
class, and made him stand there during the hour. 
Of course he was humiliated ; and before the hour 
was over he was sullen and angry. He left the 
classroom in an extremely bad mood. It was 
evident that he had acquired a dislike for the 
teacher, which was intensified by experiences of 
this sort. The observer felt most uncomfortable 
himself. 

It was really a desperate situation, for here 
was a teacher who knew little but technical facts, 
which she was trying to cram into the head of a 
boy who could not receive them, because nature 
had implanted in him an instinct to deal with 
things that had life and movement and signifi- 
cance. And this teacher, on account of the 
authority acquired as a result of more or less 
artificial relations, could discipline this boy so 
as to make him an object of ridicule on the part 
of his fellows. There is nothing that will strike 
deeper into a boy than this. Whether we like it 
or whether we do not, masculine nature is con- 
structed on such a plan that it will resent and 
resist experiences of this kind. Everything mean 



24 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

will be aroused in a boy under these conditions, 
and the thing he will try to do above all else will 
be to free himself from such situations. He 
would rather work his head off outside of school 
than to study in a classroom and be subjected to 
such treatment as he received on this particular 
occasion. If the regimen of the school could be 
made more fully adapted to the needs of mascu- 
line nature, boys would wish to continue longer 
in the school. It is idle to talk about ways and 
means of keeping boys in school if they must be 
taught by persons who have no real grasp on 
the things they teach, and who do not understand 
masculine interests and needs. 

Take the motor type of boy who strongly feels 
the call of things, w^hose deepest impulse is to be 
active, and put him in a schoolroom where there 
is no action whatever, and where everything, even 
the teacher, is static and formal, and one has a 
situation where a tragedy cannot be avoided. 
There is bound to be resistance, inattention, and 
disorder on the part of such a boy unless he is 
coerced by the teacher. One will always find 
strain and stress in such a situation, because it 
is not in accord with nature's intentions. This 
does not mean that our teaching must follow 
nature's plan precisely in detail; but when one 
flies straight in the face of nature, he is sure to 
get the worst of the conflict in the end. 

The Problem of Over-work in the High School. — 



THE CRUCIAL AGE 25 

Throughout the civilized world to-day there is a 
deepening conviction on the part of physicians, 
educationalists, and intelligent laymen that the 
school makes too heavy inroads upon the nervous 
energy of its pupils. In every progressive country 
the more observing people are aroused over what 
seems to be a danger to the nervous health and 
stability of the rising generation. Congresses of 
local, national, and international scope are calling 
upon the proper authorities to give more attention 
to the physical welfare of the children committed 
to their care. "With scarcely an exception the 
physicians of France, Italy, England, and Amer- 
ica, who have expressed themselves upon the 
subject declare that a large proportion of chil- 
dren in modern life are suffering from over- 
strain. 

Surely the danger is grave enough ; but it does 
not lie so much in mental application as in social 
and other excesses during adolescence, and the 
unhygienic conditions under wiiich school work is 
carried forward. It is likely that study does not 
injure the adolescent so much as unhygienic modes 
of living and dressing. At a time when the body 
is rapidly expanding, it is apparent that constric- 
tion of dress must seriously interfere with health- 
ful development. Organs thus constricted are un- 
able to attain complete development, and so they 
can not perform their proper functions in the 
body, and the mechanism as a whole must suffer 



26 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

in consequence. When the digestive system has 
not attained complete functional development 
there must, of course, result a lack of energy for 
the work of maturity. Again, if the eliminative 
organs do not fulfil their functions properly 
trouble will follow. The breaking down of the 
adolescent, physicians are coming to say, is due 
more largely to the incomplete development of 
some vital organ which throws the whole machin- 
ery out of gear, than to overstudy, although the 
latter is at times certainly not without serious con- 
sequences. 

When the adolescent participates too actively 
in society functions, he is liable to waste his en- 
ergies. There are few situations which lead to 
greater dissipation of forces than '' party ^' life. 
The adolescent girl is at this time extremely sensi- 
tive respecting the way in which she is regarded 
by others. She is exceedingly eager to secure the 
applause of all about her, and her mind works 
with intense activity to obtain the ends she so 
much desires. ''Slights" sink deeply, and they 
may give rise to broodings which are as poison to 
an already over-tense nervous system. Inhibitions 
and restraints are thrown off, and the machinery 
may run on until it may wear itself out. 

The Increasing Nervous Strain in Life. — As 
life grows more complex with any individual, ner- 
vous strain and stress become more intense with 
him. This is a commonplace, but it has a bearing 



THE CRUCIAL AGE 27 

upon educational work which many have not ap- 
preciated. In peaceful rural communities there is 
probably no danger yet of our urging youth be- 
yond a safe limit of nervous health and stability. 
But how is it in the city ? In a recent work of great 
merit, Forel, the eminent Italian alienist, has 
called attention to the factors in modem life that 
produce nervous overstrain and mental disturb- 
ance; and the school plays an important role in 
unsettling the nervous system of youth. Often 
teachers — or rather those who lay out their work 
for them — forget that pupils live much more in- 
tensely to-day in the home and on the street than 
they did a half or even a quarter of a century ago. 
As culture increases; as books and pictures and 
music become more plentiful; as the telephone 
brings the young together more frequently for 
social intercourse ; in short as the objects of inter- 
est increase in the environment, the individual 
must make a correspondingly greater effort to 
adjust himself to them. To read a book expends 
energy; to study a picture expends energy; to 
learn to play or sing expends energy; to respond 
to people on the streets expends energy; to par- 
ticipate in a ''party" expends energy. Now, 
multiply all these things in a child's environment, 
as we are doing everywhere, for this is what cul- 
ture means, and you may reach the point where 
his nervous resources will be overtaxed. Add to 
all these a constantly enlarging school program 



28 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

which pupils must complete, and one has a situa- 
tion which should receive very serious considera- 
tion from teachers as well as parents. 

A Typical Case of Overstrain in the School. — 
In one of the leading high schools in this country, 
the strenuous ideal is carried to the limit. The 
pupils are all required to be in their seats ready 
for the day's work at 8:30 A. M. The first heat 
lasts from 8:30 until 12:30 without a break. It 
requires a minute or two for the classes to pass 
from one recitation room to another ; but otherwise 
the pupils hardly stand on their feet during the 
course of four hours. In some cases pupils sit 
continually for two hours. The school authorities 
acknowledge that this does not seem to be right 
from a physical standpoint ; but they say they can- 
not plan the day's program so as to provide for 
intermissions, and accomplish all that is required 
of them in the regular work. The school is a large 
one, and the machinery required to keep it running 
smoothly is very complex, so that it seems the 
welfare of individual pupils must be sacrificed to 
some extent. 

Not Less Work but Less Waste. — Now, it is not 
at all certain that the typical high school is requir- 
ing more intellectual work of a pupil than he ought 
to do, if he could only do it in the most economical 
way. But to keep anyone, especially an adolescent 
boy or girl, continuously at Work for four hours, 
sitting practically all the time in poorly ventilated 



THE CRUCIAL AGE 29 

and lighted rooms and in ill-adjusted seats is the 
next thing to manslaughter. It will sound com- 
monplace to many to say that economy and effici- 
ency would be promoted by breaking up this four- 
hour stretch into four periods, with ten minute 
intervals of freedom. Investigations made at 
home and abroad warrant one in asserting that 
more can be accomplished with greater freshness 
and interest and less fatigue in relatively short 
periods of concentrated work than in long un- 
broken periods, when pupils remain seated a 
large part of the time. An immature organism 
cannot well endure a four-hour period of con- 
tinuous application to anything. Young pupils 
certainly cannot react effectively to educative 
stimulation under such a regime. It is not ad- 
vocated that the amount of work required of 
pupils be materially lessened, but only that the 
conditions under which this work is done be de- 
termined with due regard to the needs of high- 
school pupils in respect to the principles of 
mental economy and hygiene. 

Practicable Means of Avoiding Overstrain. — 
In the school referred to above, there is a well- 
equipped gymnasium; and it would be a simple 
matter so to organize the school that every pupil 
would have twenty minutes of gymnastic exercise 
during the morning session. This would, in a way 
at least, offset the disadvantages of long sitting 
in such seats as are found in the typical school. 



30 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

This gymnastic exercise would release the intel- 
lectual centers of the brain, and call into play the 
motor areas, thus tending to preserve a healthy 
balance in cerebral functions. If there be no gym- 
nasium in a school building, then a period of 
marching, of freehand exercise in the assembly 
room, or of running out-of-doors should be pro- 
vided. "With all its disadvantages, this will be 
'better than continuous application for an entire 
session. 

In addition to the period of physical relaxation, 
it is highly desirable to arrange for a ten or fifteen 
minute recess, when pupils may eat a sandwich 
if they feel hungry, as is apt to be the case when 
they have had breakfast before eight o'clock, and 
cannot have luncheon until about one o'clock. A 
hungry child is not in a condition to profit best by 
classroom instruction ; and moreover, it is not con- 
ducive to physical well-being for most pupils to 
go for such long periods without nutrition. 

High-School Athletics. — The best safeguard of 
youth is a wholesome life out-of-doors in games 
and plays. But there are dangers here, too. 
Throughout the country to-day there is a growing 
tendency to restrain high-school students in their 
athletic activities. Reports have been made to the 
effect that a number of boards of education have 
adopted rules prohibiting inter-academic athletic 
contests. There seem to be a number of valid rea- 
sons why such action is justifiable, at least in many 



THE CRUCIAL AGE 31 

conmninities. Tlie chief interest in athletics in 
some high schools is to develop a winning team. 
The majority of the pupils do not engage in play- 
ing games themselves ; they simply *'root'* for the 
team. And when a school celebrates the glories of 
a winning team, the celebrants often go to excesses 
of various sorts in their demonstrations. Perhaps 
the most serious objection to present tendencies is 
that high-school boys are undoubtedly injured 
sometimes because of overstrain in athletic com- 
petition. Within the past few years there have 
been a number of cases, mentioned in the maga- 
zines and the press, of breakdown of boys from un- 
due effort in athletics. At recent meetings of phy- 
sical education societies and some of the depart- 
ments of the National Education Association, phy- 
sicians and others have called attention to the 
danger of athletio overstrain, especially among 
immature high-school boys. 

Injury from Athletics. — Some men on racing- 
crews deteriorate when they break training. In 
several universities abundant evidence has been 
secured showing that a considerable proportion of 
men who row enlarge their hearts to such an ex- 
tent that when training ceases and they stop tak- 
ing exercise degeneration sets in. It is probable 
that at least one-half of all men who engage in 
hard athletic contests suffer overstrain which 
will tell on them sooner or later. 

Rowing contests are more severe on the heart 



32 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

than most other athletic contests probably, unless 
it be basket-ball or sprinting. In baseball, football, 
hockey, or the like, there are brief periods of rest 
as the game proceeds so that a player may catch 
his breath; but when the rowing race is on, it is 
impossible to call out time for any reason. Every 
man must do his best even if he drops in the bottom 
of the boat, which sometimes happens. Running 
contests, unless they be very short, are as damag- 
ing to later health as rowing. When a boy drops 
on the ground in a faint at the end of a race, the 
chances are that he is injured, and that he will 
not fully recover from it. 

Presumably the purpose of athletics is to de- 
velop strength and health. But actually we are not 
accomplishing this purpose because we are carry- 
ing inter-academic athletic contests too far. We 
should try to establish the practice of engaging in 
athletics for pleasure, for relaxation, and for the 
building of the body. 

Now look at another aspect of this matter, — the 
athletic program in the typical high-school. At 
the beginning of the year all the boys are urged to 
try out for the various teams. The best developed 
and the physically strongest boys make the teams. 
What happens to those who are not well developed, 
who are not strong, and who need athletic train- 
ing? They are crowded to the side lines to look on. 
What can be said for a system that selects out 
those who are already well trained and who are 



THE CRUCIAL AGE 33 

least in need of furtlier training, and devotes prac- 
tically all the energies and resources of an institu- 
tion to these few individuals ? 

Physical Training by Proxy. — In some high 
schools, most of the pupils are not permitted to 
use the gymnasium after school hours because it is 
required for the teams. The teams are trained 
every day, though they are least in need of train- 
ing. In such high schools the boys who most need 
exercise have only one or two short periods a 
week. If these outcasts do manage to get up a 
team, they cannot very well take care of them- 
selves. In some schools the physical training 
teachers devote nine-tenths of their energies to 
a few boys on the teams who could quite well 
get on without their services. 

If this is good educational policy, then the rest 
of our educational system must have gone hope- 
lessly awry. In teaching mathematics, or history, 
or science, or any other subject, we do not think a 
few pupils should be selected out because of their 
superior ability and given all the attention of the 
teachers, while the others are left to shift for them- 
selves. There is nothing good to be said for this 
vicious system, which puts all the emphasis on 
teams and allows the rest of the pupils to secure 
their athletic training by standing around twid- 
dling their thumbs while the teams perform. 

This does not mean that there should not be 
teams in a high school. There should be teams. 



34 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

But if tliey cannot be trained without sacrificing 
the rest of the pupils, then they should be aban- 
doned. It would be better to give less attention to 
the teams and more to the mass, — better for every- 
one concerned. As it is now in many schools, mem- 
bers of the teams are often over-trained so that 
they are injured, whereas the great bulk of pupils 
are under-trained. 

Inter-scholastic Competition. — Will not those 
who have charge of physical training in the high 
school get together and agree to reduce the impor- 
tance attached to inter-scholastic competition? 
This wasteful, inefficient, harmful system should 
not persist forever. Some schools have already 
solved the problem. "While these schools have 
teams, they do not permit their teams to monopo- 
lize the time, energy, and opportunities of the 
athletic trainers, the gymnasium, the athletic 
fields, and so on. 

There is another reason why it is important to 
reduce the importance attached to teams and inter- 
scholastic competition in high schools. In some 
schools the only road to distinction lies through 
athletic superiority. One can hear pupils in such 
schools say: **We want to make the team. One 
can't have any standing in this school unless he 
can get on a team. If I can't make a team, I am 
going to drop out of school." Every reader of 
these lines probably knows pupils who have left 
school because they could not make a team. There 



THE CRUCIAL AGE 35 

was nothing else in school which was bo desirablo 
as making a team. 

In these distracting times, we need to exalt gen- 
nine intellectual work in every way possible. We 
should hold up for public admiration pupils who 
excel in intellectual activities. Their names should 
be put in the papers. They should be cheered by 
their fellows. Just so long as the athletic hero 
receives all the applause of his fellows, just so 
long will athletics be the chief attraction for most 
boys. They will put forth their effort in that and 
not in an intellectual direction. 

Physical Training of Girls. — Now what about 
our girls? One who has a chance to observe the 
girls in graduating classes in different high schools 
can hardly fail to be impressed with the lack of 
proper physical development which they fre- 
quently exhibit. It will be safe to say that at 
least one-third of the girls who graduate from 
high school have curvature of the spine, or their 
shoulders are not even, or they stand in a bad 
position, or they have too much flesh or too little. 
Investigations made recently in California showed 
that about three-fourths of the girls who go to 
college and university are not in good form 
physically. 

What is the cause of this condition? The pre- 
vailing theory is that high-heeled shoes, constric- 
tion from dress, and lack of any systematic exer- 
cise are responsible for the physical deficiencies 



36 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

of girls. But the chief reason why girls are so 
poorly developed is because practically no atten- 
tion has been given to their physical training. 
In some schools girls do not have any regular 
physical exercise. They are not given advice 
by capable teachers regarding their particular 
defects and how to overcome them. Many of the 
bodily defects of girls are due to habitual bend- 
ing over desks, which may cause curvature of the 
spine, which in turn may cause other troubles. 

We are probably getting better rather than 
worse in this respect. There is not so much 
prolonged sitting in seats as there used to be; 
seats are being adapted to individual pupils; 
and the value of healthful physical development 
is coming to appeal to the layman as well as to 
the teacher. But there is one problem which has 
not been solved yet in most schools. Girls are 
not given instruction regarding their individual 
needs in respect to exercises and general physical 
training and hygiene. 

How would it do to adopt a policy that no girl 
(or boy for that matter) should be graduated from 
a high school who showed marked physical de- 
fects? Suppose this could be impressed upon 
pupils in the freshman class ; would they not give 
attention to the matter and come through at the 
end of the high-school course in better physical 
shape than some of them do now? The principle 
of giving marks for physical development and 



THE CRUCIAL AGE 37 

wellbeing is recognized in the selection of teachers, 
and in some places in admission to college. The 
best place to put the principle into effect is down 
in the seventh and eighth grades, and in the high 
school, when a pupil's body is growing rapidly 
and taking on its final form. 



CHAPTER II 
BOY PROBLEMS 

''Breaking the Law." — Recently five boys, 
ranging from thirteen to fifteen years of age, were 
arrested for breaking into a hardware store and 
taking some tools. They live in a small town of 
about twelve hundred inhabitants. The boys have 
told the story of how they came to this stage in 
their career. They did not like their school work. 
They had got into the habit of loafing on the 
streets at night. They early learned to smoke and 
they spent all the change they could get for 
cigarettes. They devoted much of their time when 
out of school prowling around for the sake of 
adventure. There are two poolrooms in this town, 
and almost every night the boys would visit both 
of them. They listened to rough, vicious talk in 
the poolrooms. They heard men say that it was a 
clever, manly trick for boys to take chances with 
the law. These men ridiculed the conventions and 
morals of daily life, and the boys began to think 
that nobody but a ''sissy" would stay at home 
nights and read, study, or go to bed. 

The boys declared that when they broke into 
the hardware store they did not intend to steal 

38 



BOY PROBLEMS 39 

tools enough to make much difference to the pro- 
prietor. They wished to show that they dared to 
do certain *' stunts" which they heard men brag- 
ging about in the poolrooms. Besides, they 
wanted to go off on a hike and forage on the way. 
They needed a few tools which they could not get 
at home; and even if they could have got them, 
they did not want their parents to know they were 
planning an escapade. 

The boys maintained that they were no worse 
than most of the boys in their town. They ' * hap- 
pened" to break into the store, but they declared 
that a number of their pals would just as soon 
have done it if they had thought they could have 
made a good escape. All these boys are on the 
street much of the time. It is apparent where 
they got their ideals, and what sort of concep- 
tion they have formed of how a boy should con- 
duct himself. 

Boy Life in Small Towns. — The writer has in- 
vestigated a number of towns in which boy life is 
about on the same plane as in the town men- 
tioned; and many investigators have reported 
similar conditions in their respective localities. 
There is little that is wholesome and interesting 
for the boys in these towns to do when they are 
not in school. The ''substantial" men of these 
places have made their >'pile" and they do not 
want to spend any of it on ''fads" and "frills." 
When it is proposed that they should help to build 



40 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

a gymnasium or establish a public playground 
with suitable apparatus for the boys, they pooh- 
pooh at the plan. They say they did not have 
such things when they were young, and they do 
not propose to furnish them for the rising genera- 
tion. 

The churches in these towns are, as a rule, in- 
effective in dealing with boys. The Sunday serv- 
ices do not appeal to them. In many towns there 
is not a church that offers any attractions that 
meet the needs of boys during the teens. Most 
of the boys have no affiliation with the churches in 
any way; even at an early age they boast about 
their antagonism to it. They say that church peo- 
ple are ''sissified." They hear this talk in the 
poolrooms, and they catch it up quickly and think 
it is a smart thing to ridicule any boy who goes to 
church or Sunday-school, or who does not sub- 
scribe to all the by-laws of the gang. 

If the churches in these towns had swimming 
pools or bowling alleys or moving picture exhibits 
or basket ball courts or similar facilities, they 
might attract boys and keep them off the street 
and out of the poolrooms. Would it not be worth 
while to accomplish this even if the Sunday serv- 
ices were not quite so elaborate, or so satisfactory 
to adults f "Which is of greater consequence in 
religious work — to lead the older people of the 
town into church on Sunday, or to entice the boys 
off the streets every night in the week and keep 



BOY PROBLEMS 41 

them away from the poolrooms, the livery stables, 
the barber shops, and the railway stations'? 

The Sdiools in Small Towns. — The schools in 
small towns often fail to win and hold boys. The 
five boys referred to at the outset who are now 
serving time in a reform school say 'they disliked 
the work of their school, which consists largely in 
learning books by heart. There is no manual 
training, very little gymnastic work, no organized 
plays and games, and but little laboratory science. 
The principal and his teachers have asked the 
board of education for equipment for a manual 
training room, but some of the members of the 
board think "manual training is all fol-de-rol." 
They say they will not support any of the new- 
fangled notions about schools. Meanwhile, the 
boys are going to perdition, and the ''substan- 
tial" men are letting them go. 

Several of the men in this town who have op- 
posed innovations in school work have said in 
substance : ''When we were boys we had to work. 
But the boys in this town won 't do anything. They 
run the streets when they ought to be doing 
chores. They have too much done for them al- 
ready. We don't propose to pamper them any 
more. The principal wants a room fitted up with 
tools for these fellows to fool around in, but we 
won't spend our money in that way. What time 
we had for going to school we put in learning our 
lessons, and that is what these boys ought to be 



42 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

doing. If they want to work they can get plenty 
of it around their homes." 

New Times' Bring New Problems. — The chief 
difficulty in bringing up children in towns and 
cities to-day arises from the fact that those who 
control the resources do not recognize that we are 
undergoing sociological changes which make new 
methods of training imperative. Most of these 
adults spent their boyhood in the country. Every- 
one works in the country. There is no trouble in 
keeping boys properly occupied on the farm. A 
person in the country who would not work would 
be ostracized ; but it is just the other way in town. 
Everything encourages loafing. If a boy in the 
country could go to a poolroom and hear the talk 
there he might become a loafer too, unless there 
was great pressure put on him to keep at work. 

When the boy life of a town is unorganized; 
when neither the school nor the church nor the 
parents can keep boys occupied in wholesome 
ways, then they will loaf. They will congregate 
in places where much that they he^ encourages 
vicious speech and conduct, and the chances are 
that sooner or later some or all of them will be- 
come offenders in one way or another. 

The individual home cannot, as a rule, solve 
many of the problems of training its boys prop- 
erly. Any one boy cannot be kept in his house 
without strain and stress when the other boys in 
the neighborhood are running the streets and 



BOY PROBLEMS 43 

plotting deviltry. Training children in these 
times is a community problem largely. Reformers 
might better save their breath than to be con- 
demning the modern home because it does not 
keep boys off the streets. We are a gregarious 
people, and we must solve most of our problems 
collectively. 

"My Boy Will Not Stay at Home/'— In this 
connection one is reminded of the complaint which 
is so frequently heard, — ' ' My boy will not stay at 
home." It is made by fathers and mothers who 
have provided comfortable homes for their boys 
as well as by parents whose means require them 
to live in a meager way. It is particularly dis- 
tressing to a parent to have his boys inapprecia- 
tive and uninterested when he has, as he thinks, 
put everything in his home that the children could 
desire. 

A letter now lies before the writer from a 
father who says that he has struggled hard to 
provide a good home for his children, but his old- 
est boy, who is well along in the teens, will often 
leave the house as soon as he finishes a meal, and 
he may not put in an appearance again until the 
next meal. He takes no member of the family 
into his confidence as to his adventures and his 
hanging-out places. The father says he is 
''glum" and does not say much at the table or 
any place else in the house unless he is continually 
''pumped." He seems to regard his home prin- 



44 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

cipally as a place in which, to eat and get what- 
ever supplies he needs. 

A Boy Loves Adventure. — A boy in the teens 
must have some adventure. He should have op- 
portunity to be out in the open engaged in ex- 
ploits of some kind. His parents will choose for 
themselves to stay at home and read, or enjo}^ the 
beautiful objects they have gathered together in 
their house. They know what it requires to make 
an attractive home, and for them everything they 
have acquired has interesting and vital associa- 
tions. So as a rule they would prefer to be among 
the treasures they have collected than to be else- 
where. But a boy who has not by his own efforts 
provided anything for the home generally does 
not and cannot feel attachment for what may pro- 
foundly interest the parents. A boy in the teens 
is not affected much by an esthetic home. He 
may live in a house filled with beautiful objects 
and not know they are there. He is more nomadic 
than he is domestic. His father has passed 
through the period when he finds pleasure in the 
adventurous life. He prefers the peace and com- 
fort of his own fireside; but if he could go back 
over his life he would probably discover that 
when he was in the teens a cozy fireside had little 
if any attraction for him. He was not domesti- 
cated then. He hearkened to the call of adven- 
ture just as his boy does now. 

Parents frequently say, ' ' My house is furnished 



BOY PROBLEMS 45 

with everything a boy could wish. ' ' Is this really 
true? Usually it is not true. The house is fur- 
nished with everything the parents could wish, 
and they conclude that what they enjoy should 
make a strong appeal to their boy. It is an old 
story, — the inability of the typical adult to take 
the point of view of youth. 

Most parents of means do not equip their home 
so that it will minister to the needs of an adven- 
turous youth. It is often the case that the more 
luxuriously the home is furnished the less effect- 
ively it will be adapted to the requirements of boy 
life during the teens. In an elegantly furnished 
home everyone has to be careful lest he may in- 
jure the valuable articles. Such a home must be 
enjoyed by appreciation, not by use. Adults will 
express admiration for the beauty and exquisite- 
ness of this or that article, but they will not use 
it in any way. But youth is not appreciative as a 
rule. It is dynamic, insurgent. A home that is 
furnished with everything a boy could wish is 
provided with objects that can be used. In such 
a home there will be space for games, and espe- 
cially for scuffling and horse-play. As a rule, a 
boy will leave a home in which he has no oppor- 
tunity to scuffle, and he will go where he can 
indulge this passion. 

The Boy Who Is ''Picked On." — One reason 
why boys often will not stay in elegant homes is 
because somebody may always be ''picking on 



46 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

them." A boy was overheard recently to make 
just this statement to his mother. He has irri- 
tated her because he is indifferent to the advan- 
tages in his beautiful home. She is trying to 
make him appreciative and so she is really '^pick- 
ing on" him much of the time. He is one of those 
boys who swallows his food at each meal, and 
then lights out for parts unknown. Whenever he 
is in the house he has to answer questions about 
where he has been last, what he has been doing, 
what he proposes to do next, why he does not 
do differently, why he does not talk more, and 
so on. 

One principle can be stated emphatically — a 
person cannot develop a boy's love for his home 
by *' bawling him out" because he will not stay 
at home. It will do no good to lecture him about 
the efforts that have been put forth to make his 
home comfortable. One can never develop ap- 
preciation in anybody by complaining because he 
is indifferent. Appreciation cannot be forced; 
it must always be spontaneously expressed. 

A parent should find out what kind of homes 
attract his wandering boy. If the influences in 
these homes are wholesome, then let him go to 
them. He will get better training in them than 
he will in his own home probably if he is con- 
tinually ''picked on." He may in time come to 
realize what a good home he has had, even if dur- 
ing the adventurous age he seems inappreciative 



BOY PROBLEMS 47 

of what is done for him. Then it should be re- 
membered that a boy must eventually live with 
other people, and he should spend considerable 
time with them as a boy, either in his own home 
or in their homes. He will be broader and better 
prepared for life if he is not kept too much in his 
own home, or at least with the members of his 
own family. 

If a boy persists in leaving his home for the 
street or the poolhall or the saloon it is a differ- 
ent matter. There is but one course to follow in 
such a case, — he should change his associations; 
he should be sent off among strangers who will 
help him to observe a regular program of study 
or work. It is frequently true that a boy who 
will never stay at home will, when he goes out 
into the world, apply himself to a systematic 
regime of w^ork or study. There is no good at 
all in keeping a boy at home who is forming the 
habit of running the streets in search of excite- 
ment. 

Boys Need Comrades, Not Disciplinarians. — 
Problems of this kind could ordinarily be solved 
satisfactorily if parents and teachers and their 
boys could be comrades together. Unfortunately 
many of us are better disciplinarians than we are 
good friends to our boys. We do not talk to 
them much about any subject except their con- 
duct. So they come in time to be uncomfortable 
in our presence, and they avoid us as much as 



48 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

they can, even when we sacrifice a good deal to 
provide comforts and advantages for them. It 
would be better usually if our children were not 
informed so frequently that we were sacrificing 
much for them. We would keep a firmer hold on 
them if they could think of us as good scouts and 
companions rather than as conscientious but 
fault-finding providers. Some of the time which 
is used in amassing luxuries for our offspring- 
might better be spent in being good fellows 
with them. 

As for the boy who leaves a home pinched by 
poverty, in which there is neither room nor equip- 
ment adapted to his needs, the community should 
provide opportunities for him to spend his leisure 
hours in a wholesome way. Like so many of our 
problems relating to the training of youth, this 
one can be solved only by dealing with the 
sociological factors involved. The parents in a 
neighborhood should cooperate to abolish the at- 
tractions which seduce youth, and to put in their 
place institutions which will furnish suitable oc- 
cupation and amusement. Unless this can be 
done we cannot remedy the evils that harrass us. 
We have plenty of illustrations of this fact in 
the experiences of those who have preceded us, 
and who have tried to solve these problems by 
prohibition or punishment alone, or by indiffer- 
ence. They have failed every time, and we will 
come to the same end if we adopt their methods. 



BOY PROBLEMS 49 

'^ Scrapping.^' — We may glance now at a dif- 
ferent kind of problem with which parents and 
teachers have to deal in training boys. A prin- 
cipal of a public school complains that she is 
unable to prevent the boys in her school from 
"scrapping" on the playground during inter- 
missions. She inquires whether there is the same 
difficulty in other schools. She says she cannot 
understand why there should be so much quarrel- 
ing among her boys because they come from 
'* good homes." 

No matter what sort of a home a boy comes 
from, he is likely to get into a combat with some 
of his fellows on the playground unless special 
pains are taken to keep him interested and occu- 
pied in organized games and plays. Leave a 
group of boys up to the middle teens to their 
own devices, and unless they are unusually re- 
sourceful in planning games for themselves, they 
will probably have a "scrap" before they break 
up. 

Every boy is pugnacious by inheritance. His 
remote ancestors were fighters ; they had to fight 
for self-preservation. Boys from "good homes" 
are about as likely to pick a fight as boys who 
are not so well favored. It is true that the boys 
from the slums and alleys are as a rule more 
combative and quarrelsome than those from the 
avenues; but still at bottom they all have the 
same impulses, and under similar conditions they 



50 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

will behave in much the same way. This is par- 
ticularly the case the younger they are. The older 
they become the greater will be the influence of 
their environment ei'ther in repressing their im- 
pulses or in reinforcing them. 

Prevent Fighting by Substitution. — The most 
effective way to prevent quarreling on the play- 
ground, on the street, or in the home is to organ- 
ize boys into groups for competitive games. 
Football will often change a group from a quar- 
relsome, fighting gang into reasonably well-con- 
trolled and self-restrained individuals. ''Tug-of- 
war" will give vent to the impulses that might 
otherwise lead to a ''scrap" in a company of 
boys. "Pomp, pomp pull away," ''Fox and 
Geese" and the like will usually divert the atten- 
tion of boys from fighting on a playground. 
Competitive gymnastic activities will always ex- 
ert a wholesome influence in subduing the com- 
bative impulses, because boys will compete with 
one another on the rings, on the trapeze, and so 
on, and thus expend their energies in a legitimate 
way. At the appropriate season snow-balling 
matches in defending snow forts, say, will fur- 
nish an occasion for discharging the pugnacity 
virus that otherwise may cause trouble. So one 
might mention many other games and plays that 
are simple and yet are effective in preventing 
fighting on the playground. The principle of sub- 
stituting wholesome competition for quarreling is 



BOY PROBLEMS 51 

applicable just as well in the home as it is on 
the playground. 

Often a boy who will start a fight whenever he 
gets a chance will be cured if he be given boxing 
lessons, in which the aim is to develop skill in 
offense and defense and not merely to inflict 
injury on an antagonist. As a rule, when a boy 
becomes interested in boxing he will be ashamed 
to be seen mixed up in a street brawl. Training 
in boxing substitutes skill for brute force and 
destructiveness. 

Should a boy be punished for fighting? Often 
a boy is hectored and irritated because he will not 
'' stand up for his rights " His playmates will 
call him a "sissy" and they will take pleasure in 
plaguing him. Boys possess remnants of the 
savage instincts in this regard, and the fact must 
be taken account of by a parent or teacher who 
is charged with the training of a timid or non- 
combative boy. There are times when a boy 
should be encouraged to defend himself against 
the attacks of bullies or ruffians. He will be trou- 
bled less if he shows that he has some ''good 
stuff" in him. Also he will have greater strength 
of character in the end if, as a boy, he resents 
being dominated by bullies. At the same time, 
he should be made to feel that just as no one 
has a right to domineer over him, so he has no 
right to bully other boys. 

Teasing. — Of a kind with the tendency of boys 



52 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

to pick a fight is their tendency to tease their 
comrades, their parents, their teachers and any- 
other persons and even animals from which they 
can secure unusual or lively responses. A large 
part of the discipline of boys in the school and 
the home arises out of this trait; and the trait is 
not confined to young boys, for even college 
students plague one another and play "practical 
jokes, ^' as they call them, on their instructors. In 
some colleges students spend about as much time 
and mental energy in ''putting things over" on 
their teachers as they do in mastering their 
studies. Also they are keener in hazing some of 
their classmates than they are in making good 
recitations, or doing good laboratory work. 

Often it seems that those who tease the per- 
sons with whom they come in contact really enjoy 
the annoyance or discomfort or pain which they 
cause. They laugh with glee when they see the 
teacher sprawling on the floor because a pupil 
removed his chair from its accustomed place. 
They are overjoyed when they see a dog chas- 
ing a frightened cat. They like to tempt a hun- 
gry dog with food and then jerk it out of his 
reach and watch him struggle to secure it. They 
think it is great fun to hide the clothes of a boy 
who is swimming so that he must remain for 
hours naked on the river bank. They derive great 
pleasure from annoying people by tickling them, 
or kicking them on the shins, or stepping on their 



BOY PROBLEMS 53 

toes, or yelling in their ears, or calling them 
names, and so on ad libitum. 

Are boys naturally callous to the distress which 
they cause people and animals by their teasing 
activities? By way of illustrating the principle 
involved here, it may be said that the writer has 
observed men whose chief pleasure seems to be 
to fish, especially for trout in mountain streams. 
They say it is magnificent ** sport" because trout 
are so "gamey." These fishermen apparently 
never think of the suffering of the fish which 
they catch. They regard the matter as a contest, 
and they are eager to win. The factor of pain 
plays no part at all in the sport so far as the 
angler is concerned, though a bystander may be 
aware only of the pain experienced by the fish. 
He may see nothing meritorious in the '' sport," 
and so it will appear to him to be a cruel, brutal 
business. Thus it all depends upon the point of 
view of the individual whether an action is re- 
garded as cruel or as wholesome sport. Anglers 
usually delight in describing their contest with a 
fish which has struggled long to save its life. In 
such a case a man is not really aware that he is 
actually taking life. He is simply thinking of his 
own cleverness, his endurance, and his ingenuity 
in finally capturing his victim. 

Again, the writer has talked with men wlio en- 
joy hunting. They come in from a day's shoot- 
ing, bringing with them two or three ducks, or 



54 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

half a dozen rabbits, or a dozen quail, perhaps. 
These hunters seem never to give a thought to 
the pain created by their bullets or knives. The 
larger the killing the more they brag about it. 
They look upon the creatures of the forest as 
objects for testing their own ability in woodcraft, 
and especially their skill with the rifle. The 
writer has observed huntsmen spread out a dozen 
bleeding ducks before admiring comrades, every 
one of the men showing in all his expressions that 
he did not entertain any idea of pain in respect 
to these creatures. 

Once more, the writer has seen crowds of in- 
telligent and apparently refined men and women 
observing a football game. In some of these con- 
tests blood flowed freely; and in a few cases the 
players were seriously injured. But the on- 
lookers were quite indifferent to this. They saw 
only the manifestation of muscle, agility and 
courage, and the idea of pain could not gain an 
entrance into their consciousness. Frequently 
some sensitive person complains about the cruelty 
of football; but people who like the game cannot 
appreciate criticism of this kind. 

A Boy Does Not Think of the Pain He Causes. 
— So when a boy teases his playmates or other 
persons, or a cat or dog or colt, he does not think 
of the pain he is causing them, although, looking 
at the matter from the adult's standpoint, he 
treats them cruelly much of the time. All the boy 



BOY PROBLEMS 55 

thinks about is the reactions he can secure from 
the things he teases ; he has a passion to get them 
into unusual and difficult situations to observe 
what they will do. Take a boy, say nine years of 
age, who has a younger sister. He will be likely 
to tease her constantly unless he is kept occupied 
in other ways. He will frighten her, or hide her 
toys, or run away from her when she does not 
want to be left alone; or he may hang her dolls 
by the neck out of the window, or break down her 
playhouse, or do any one of a hundred different 
things which will secure violent reactions from 
her. The parents may regard these acts as cruel, 
but the boy himself regards them simply as 
'' fun." 

Often a boy who is given to plaguing others 
will protest when he looks on at a case of plagu- 
ing practiced by someone else. Not being in the 
game, his sympathetic feelings may come to the 
front. He may annoy his own pets but he will 
probably defend them vigorously if any one else 
molests them. 

The Passion for Mastery. — There is another 
phase of this trait which should be mentioned. 
Two boys had a dog hitched to a cart, and were 
driving it through the street *' for fun." When- 
ever the dog showed any desire to stop or to turn 
out of the middle of the street, the boys would 
strike it with a whip, and several times it cried 
out from the pain. A number of adults passing 



56 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

on the street called to the boys to cease the pun- 
ishment of the dog, but they soon forgot the com- 
mands given them. When asked why they made 
the dog suffer, their only response was that they 
'' wanted him to mind"; and he was their " own 
dog anyway," and they had a right to do what 
they wished with him. 

What could have been uppermost in the minds 
of these boys? In answering this question we 
may be helped if we will ask another — Why will 
an intoxicated man whip his horse, or whip his 
children upon coming into the house, or express 
his power over any living thing around him? 
Why will the leader of a group whip his subjects 
if they will not submit to his will? It is evident 
that in all these cases the desire for control, for 
mastery plays a leading part. Instinctively men 
wish to show authority over the creatures around 
them, and even over their own associates. They 
wish to reduce them to submission. So whipping 
a dog, a horse, or even a child which manifests 
any tendency to follow its own desires is largely 
instinctive. In a case of this sort the aggressor 
is not keenly conscious of the pain inflicted upon 
his victim. He is simply dominated by the im- 
pulse to make the thing upon which he is express- 
ing his power obey his will. One may often ob- 
serve children whip their dolls or their soldiers 
or their rocking-horse; and as they talk to them 
they indicate their attitude — '* I'll teach you to 



BOY PROBLEMS 57 

mind me," ''I'll show you that I am boss over 
you," and so on. 

Cooperative Games and Plays as a Cure for 
Plaguing. — What can be done to develop in boys 
a consciousness of the pain which they inflict in 
their bullying and teasing? In the first place, we 
should so far as possible suggest activities to 
them which will require the cooperation of their 
fellows and of the creatures with which they have 
relations. Take, for example, the case of a boy 
who plagues his dog, or beats it in gratification 
of the instinct to show authority over it. If the 
boy could be led to play a game in which the dog 
would take an essential part, then the latter 
would become a partner in an interesting affair 
rather than a slave to be kept in subjection. 

Then, in the second place, a bully must be made 
to appreciate that living things have feelings like 
his own. He will not take this view readily. In 
the last resort it might prove a means of grace 
to a boy who hectors a weaker brother or play- 
mate if he should be hectored in the same way by 
one stronger than himself. Of course, this is a 
harsh method of treatment; but often it is the 
only way one can make some children realize that 
their acts are the cause of suffering by others. 
When discipline of this sort is administered, it 
should not be accompanied by anger on the part 
of the parent or the teacher. The latter should 
say to the bully: ''You struck this boy with a 



58 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

snowball. You say you did it for fun. Now I 
will strike you in the same way, and you tell me 
whether it is funny." In some such manner, 
children who annoy others may be brought to 
their senses by being made to experience the 
same distress as they create. 

Experiences That Test Courage and Endur- 
ance. — For their proper development boys should 
have experiences which test their courage and en- 
durance; those who are coddled and safeguarded 
from all rigorous situations are apt to acquire 
loafing and bullying traits. A concrete instance 
will bring the principle before us. Two brothers, 
fourteen and sixteen years of age respectively, 
recently went sailing on a lake on the shores of 
which they had their home. There was a heavy 
wind blowing. Some of the neighbors observed 
the boys handling the boat which was behaving 
badly, and they became alarmed. They went run- 
ning to the father and urged him to call the boys 
in. They said the boat might capsize at any 
moment, and if so the boys might lose their lives. 
They declared it was foolhardy for the boys to 
go out on the lake in such a heavy wind. 

But the father told the neighbors that the boys 
had been out before under such conditions and 
had successfully managed their boat. Besides 
they were not a great way from shore, and even 
if they should capsize they would stand a good 
chance of drifting in safely. Further, they en- 



BOY PROBLEMS 59 

joyed sailing the boat under difficulties, and boys 
should have such experience. The father felt 
that children in the city in these days do not 
often have experiences that test their mettle, and 
he wished to give his boys opportunities to han- 
dle themselves in difficult situations in order to 
develop their resourcefulness and courage. 

The anxious neighbors thought the father was 
not acting prudently in this matter. They said he 
should not take such chances. They declared that 
if anything happened to the boys the blame would 
rest on the father. The father, in response, 
pointed out that boys had been sailing on the lake 
for many years, and there had not been more than 
two or three tragedies in all this time. It would 
be wrong then to prevent the boys from testing 
their endurance and skill because of a remote 
chance that they would be drowned. 

As it turned out, the boys continued sailing for 
an hour and a half without any mishap, and they 
came in feeling that there would be hardly any 
emergency which might arise on the lake which 
they could not meet. The father asked them 
what they would have done if the boat had cap- 
sized. They said they would have been able to 
crawl on top of it and drift to shore, and they 
did not feel afraid at any time. 

Who was right in dealing with the boys — the 
father or the neighbors? The neighbors were 
wrong. One of these neighbors has never let his 



60 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

boys go out in a sail boat. He himself is terror- 
stricken when he is in a boat and the wind comes 
up. He will not let his boys climb high trees 
because he says they may fall and break a bone 
or kill themselves, and he will not take any 
chances. 

If boys are permitted to do only what is abso- 
lutely safe, what may happen to them when they 
are placed in situations in which there is some 
danger? They may be helpless. The writer has 
an opportunity to see this illustrated among 
students in a university which is situated on- the 
shores of a lake. Canoeing is a favorite pastime 
among the students. Occasionally an inexperi- 
enced student will be in a canoe when a gust of 
wind comes up unexpectedly. Never having been 
in such a situation as this, in which there is 
some danger, the novice is likely to lose his head, 
and the moment this happens he will probably 
capsize. Once in the water he will be overcome 
with fear, and he will not make use of the means 
at hand to save himself. 

How far should boys take chances I Far enough 
to involve some danger, but not to an unreason- 
able extent. They must have frequent experi- 
ences in which they will be required to keep cool, 
to be dexterous and skillful, and to have endur- 
ance and persistence in any difficulty until they 
have straightened it out. In no other way can 
they develop resourcefulnes and courage and en- 



BOY PROBLEMS 61 

durance. Besides, experience of this sort will 
furnish the best antidote to scrapping and 
bullying. 

The typical parent restricts his boys too 
rigidly. He is apprehensive of danger. He keeps 
them out of trees, off from fences and buildings, 
away from horses and all animals, and off from 
the street where there are carriages and auto- 
mobiles, because of his fear that something will 
happen to them. In an earlier day parents gave 
children larger freedom than they do now to try 
themselves in difficult situations, partly because 
they could not supervise them — ^they were too 
busy for this — and partly also because they were 
themselves taking chances of all sorts and were 
solving their problems, and they were not mor- 
bidly apprehensive about disaster overtaking 
their children. 

The typical boy brought up in the country 
could climb trees and buildings, and be around 
animals as much as he wished, with the result 
that he developed self -helpfulness and grit quite 
beyond the typical child of the city, who is often 
restrained and restricted and worried over by all 
the adults around him. Of course, boys should 
not be encouraged or allowed to be foolhardy. 
But it would be better to be venturesome than to 
be timid and cowardly, if one has to choose be- 
tween extremes. The likelihood in modem life is 
that boys will have too few rather than too many 



62 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

experiences that will develop fortitude and self- 
reliance. 

The Call of the Swimming Pool. — There is one 
kind of experience which always exerts a bene- 
ficial influence upon a boy, but many boys in 
present-day urban life do not have this experi- 
ence — playing in the water, swimming especially. 

In his last book John Muir gives a pathetic ac- 
count of his attempts as a boy to indulge his pas- 
sion for playing in the water. His home in 
Scotland was near enough to the sea so that he 
could run to it for a swim. His father was op- 
posed to his swimming, and he had forbidden him 
to go near the sea. But every day the boy would 
go and every night he would be severely whipped 
for his disobedience. He apparently could not 
resist the temptation; the sea appeared to have 
such a hold on him that it could not be broken. 

As these lines are being written, the ice is 
breaking up in the lake over which the writer is 
looking. The water is intensely cold; but there 
are boys who cannot resist the call of the water, 
and they are about to jump in for a swim. Their 
parents have probably forbidden them to do this, 
and some of them will resort to all manner of 
devices to conceal their misdemeanor. 

It is difficult for an adult to take the point of 
view of one of these boys. We say: "How can he 
get any pleasure in that cold water? And be- 
sides, he is likely to catch his death of cold." 



BOY PROBLEMS 63 

But when we tell him this, it makes little impres- 
sion on him ; he is willing to take the chances and 
to endure the hardship. 

The memories of the sea reverberate through- 
out the boy's organism. Many of the most vital 
experiences in the life of his remote ancestors 
w^ere connected with the sea. The creatures that 
came out of the water furnished them their food 
to a considerable extent; and in turn they some- 
times furnished food for the creatures of the deep ; 
but on the whole the sea was a kindly mother, and 
she could be trusted. Even in adult life we often 
wish to be on or near the sea. When we are tired 
and distressed, we go to the seashore or take an 
ocean trip. There is no music so restful to many 
persons as the lapping of the waves. There is no 
condition under which the poet can express his 
romantic feeling so fully as when he looks at the 
waves and listens to their gentle murmur. 

Playing in the water is a good antidote for 
tense nerves. There should be a swimming pool 
in every large public school, and children should 
be permitted to spend ten or fifteen minutes in it 
every day. This will accomplish more in secur- 
ing good order in the school than much scolding 
and whipping. A large part of school disorder 
is due to tensions developed by long sitting in a 
seat. When these tensions increase up to a cer- 
tain point, a pupil is apt to become disorderly in 
one way or another. Before this time arrives he 



64 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

should be released. If he could jump into a 
swimming pool for a few minutes, he would come 
out with nerves and muscles relaxed and with his 
mind fresh and ready for his tasks. Happily the 
public schools are beginning to recognize this, and 
in progressive communities swimming pools are 
regarded as essential to good work and good 
deportment. 

If the small town as well as the large city would 
provide community swimming pools out-of-doors 
in summer and within-doors in winter, much of 
juvenile rascality would be automatically cor- 
rected. Swimming is a kind of prophylactic for 
mischief and crime. 



CHAPTER III 

GIRL PROBLEMS 

Restrictions of the Girl's Activities. — Every- 
body kllo^s^3, of course, that boys have enjoyed 
greater freedom of action than girls. It has been 
thought entirely proper and desirable that boys in 
the teens should go about freely without being at- 
tended by older persons. We have said to boys : 
*'Try your wings; go out into the world and 
come in contact with people and see what sort of 
stuff you have in you. You cannot become ready 
for a broad and useful life when you are men if 
you stay at home all the time. ' ' But we have said 
to girls: *'You must stay close beside your father 
and mother. It would be unbecoming for you to 
go beyond the sight of your parents unless you 
are accompanied by a mature person who will 
keep her eye on you and safeguard you from the 
pitfalls of life." So girls have not heretofore 
gone abroad among people as freely and as widely 
as boys have done. 

So in respect to manners; the girls have been 
hedged 'round with restraints more than boys 
have been. The latter have not been required to 

65 



66 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

give careful attention to the way in which they 
walked, stood, sat down and arose, entered a 
room and left it, and so on. We would not have 
thought highly of a boy who was too conscious 
about these matters. We have said that we 
wished him to be free and natural and unre- 
strained. But we have taken exactly the con- 
trary view regarding the girl's deportment. She 
has not been allowed to forget herself. She 
has been taught always to be conscious of the im- 
pression she was making and to do everything 
according to conventional standards. 

Again, we have allowed the boy large latitude 
in the matter of dress. We have thought it 
proper for him to wear the same suit of clothes 
for breakfast, dinner and supper, at business dur- 
ing the day and at a reception or dance in the 
evening. A boy who would change his suit for 
each meal, or even put off his day clothes and put 
on others for evening functions would be re- 
garded as too nice and proper^ — as effeminate, in 
fact. But a girl who would wear at a reception 
the same dress that was worn during the day 
would be looked upon as careless and slouchy. 
In respect to every detail of personal adornment 
we have expected the girl to give a great deal 
more attention to herself than we have expected 
of the boy. Our chief criterion of judging the boy 
has been what he is able to accomplish; his 
appearance has been a secondary matter. But 



GIRL PROBLEMS 67 

appearance has played the chief role in our judg- 
ment of the girl. We have not said to her : * ' Go 
ahead, forget yourself and do with enthusiasm 
and spirit whatever interests you." We have 
rather said to her: ''Always be careful about 
your appearance, never be neglectful of any de- 
tail affecting your looks." 

Intellectual Restrictions. — In the matter of 
education, too, we have given the boy much more 
freedom than we have allowed the girl. We have 
said to the former: "Go as far as you like in the 
pursuit of knowledge. Take advantage of all 
opportunities to enlarge your understanding of 
men and nature. Go deeply into science or his- 
tory or economics or mathematics or literature or 
whatever attracts you. The more deeply you go 
the more highly we will regard you." But we 
have said to the girl: "It will be better for you 
to study light subjects, as art and language and 
literature. It is not quite the thing for a girl to 
try to master such subjects as biology or chem- 
istry or engineering or agriculture and so on. A 
girl should polish her mind, not develop it rigor- 
ously. She should learn how to speak nicely and 
be gracious and entertaining, but she should not 
learn how to solve any scientific or economic or 
mathematical or medical or legal problems. She 
will not make so favorable an impression upon 
her friends if she gives too much attention to the 
acquisition of real knowledge in any field. 



68 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

Carefulness in Speech. — We have been par- 
ticularly insistent that the girl should be very- 
careful about her speech. She must not use terms 
that refer to the organs of the body except the 
members that are plainly visible to 'the eye. It 
would be entirely improper for her to use strong 
language, even such phrases as *'By George!" or 
*'By Heck!" Of course, she could not use pro- 
fanity or terms that had any suggestion of un- 
wholesomeness in them. But we have allowed the 
boy freedom in this respect. He could speak of 
his stomach or his legs, but the girl could not do 
so with propriety. He could say "Confound it!" 
but it would not be nice for the girl to do so. 

He could even say * ' d n it ! " and he would not 

be ruled out of polite society, but the girl would 
lose all caste if she should use such terms. So 
the boy could smoke cigarettes and cigars and 
even a pipe and still be received in good society, 
but not so with the girl. Always we have insisted 
that the girl should keep in view high ideals in 
respect to appearance, behavior, morals and con- 
duct. But we have given the boy large latitude 
in these matters provided that he would show 
intellectual or physical ability and stamina. 

Girls Are Breaking Artificial Restrictions. — 
This has been the situation respecting our atti- 
tude toward the girl and boy until the present 
moment. But the times are changing. There are 
signs now that the girl will soon disregard the 



GIRL PROBLEMS C9 

restrictions that have been imposed upon her, 
and that she will claim as much freedom as the 
boy has enjoyed. For one thing, girls are be- 
ginning to go freely about in the world, at home 
and abroad, without chaperonage, asserting that 
they are competent to take care of themselves. 
One can find them pursuing knowledge in every 
department in college and university, — agricul- 
ture, medicine, mathematics, biology, economics 
and the like. They will not now submit to being 
shut out of the various engineering fields even, as 
recent reports from some of the technical schools 
indicate. 

In the matter of conduct girls are freely doing 
whatever they wish to do. In some respects they 
are freer than boys dare to be, as observations 
at sea-side resorts will convince anyone. There 
is not much distinction now between the language 
used by girls and that used by boys ; in co-educa- 
tional colleges one can hear the girls using as 
dynamic language as the boys use. 

There are among us many persons brought up 
in the old school who do not like the freedom 
with which girls are conducting themselves m our 
times. These old-fashioned persons are predict- 
ing a slump in our ethical, social and moral rela- 
tions. To an unprejudiced observer, however, 
there is no evidence that any catastrophe is likely 
to overtake us. On the contrary, girls are better 
able to handle and protect themselves than they 



7© THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

were in the past when they did not know the ways 
of the world. 

The American Girl Is Especially Favored. — 
The American girl has always enjoyed more free- 
dom than the European girl. She has never been 
tied so closely at home or been made to conform 
to conventions so fully as her European sisters; 
and eveiy unprejudiced student of European and 
American life will agree that the social, ethical 
and moral standards in America are higher than 
they are in any European country. This has been 
impressed upon us during the past two or three 
years when our boys have been in Europe, We 
have learned in many ways that the standards of 
conduct there are somewhat lower than they are 
in our own country. One factor that has operated 
to keep the standards high in America has been 
the independence and self-reliance of our girls 
and women. There is reason to believe that with 
still greater freedom our girls and women will 
elevate rather than lower standards of conduct. 

Adolescence a Critical Period. — A typical 
mother has complained because her daughter 
fifteen years of age lacks interest in work of any 
kind. She has not yet finished the eighth grade 
in the public school which she attends. Her 
mother says that her mind is wandering all the 
time and she always tried to "skip the hard 
places." The mother thinks there should be some 
way to teach her daughter concentration. She 



GIRL PROBLEMS 71 

wishes to have a course outlined which will de- 
velop the habit of doing hard work. 

The crucial epoch in a girl's life falls between 
the fourteenth and seventeeth years. If she has 
any tendency toward unsteadiness of mind or con- 
duct it will be likely to manifest itself at that 
time. The turning point in the career of girls 
who find their way into reform schools comes at 
about fourteen. Such profound changes are tak- 
ing place then that there is a liklihood that the 
mind will " wander." Dull tasks in school are 
duller at this time than at any period before or 
after. Nature evidently intends that a girl should 
live a romantic life during these transitional 
years. Sitting in a school-room trying to memo- 
rize the contents of books does not make a strong 
appeal to any typical girl during early adoles- 
cence; and for some girls it is quite impossible to 
do anything of the kind. Performing the prosaic 
duties of a kitchen or any other part of the house 
does not awaken enthusiasm at this age. Indeed, 
no **hard work" appeals to a typical girl between 
fourteen and seventeen; but ''hard work" means 
work which has no romance about it. It means 
performing mechanical tasks in which there is no 
freedom of action, no adventure, no opportunity 
to make oneself attractive to admirers, and no 
chance to form interesting acquaintances who 
may offer possibilities for new undertakings. 
This is the emotional age; and work which gives 



72 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

no opportunity for the indulgence of emotions 
will be " hard." At the same time a girl will 
gladly spend four or five times as much energy 
on hikes or in games or in dancing as would be 
required to master her lessons in school or to do 
housework. She does not complain about expend- 
ing energy, only about doing the tasks that have 
no adventure or romance about them. 
— Concentration Depends on Interest. — When 
parents and teachers have to deal with girls, or 
boys either for that matter, of this type, they are 
apt to think there must be some simple, sure 
method of teaching concentration and faithfulness 
in the performance of dull tasks. But there is 
no easy way of accomplishing this. It is impos- 
sible to teach concentration upon or interest in 
drudgery. There are no rules that can be learned 
that will enable one to learn how to concentrate. 
The only way that application can be secured is 
to make whatever a boy or girl should attend to so 
interesting or significant that it will hold the at- 
tention. Nature has so constructed the human 
mind that it will concentrate upon matters that 
seem to be of importance in one's life. What- 
ever does not appear to be vital will be ignored. 
And the things that are regarded as of im- 
portance change as one develops. When one 
reaches .maturity he has a very different view of 
what is worth while from what he had when he 
was fourteen or fifteen. When he is sixty he has 



GIRL PROBLEMS 73 

a quite different view from what he had at 
twenty-one. As his life changes his estimate of 
values changes, and so the things that he will con- 
centrate upon at different ages change as his in- 
terests change. But the law holds for every age 
— that whatever is considered to be of chief im- 
portance at the time will be attended to and mas- 
tered if possible. 

Take a girl at fifteen, then, who does not care 
for the work of the school. What can be done for 
her? If she has normal intelligence it should be 
possible to find some kinds of work which will 
appeal to her. If she is studying grammar and 
arithmetic and history, taught in a mechanical 
way, and geography which she does not compre- 
hend, it may be impossible to hold her to her 
tasks; but if she should study laboratory science 
or household arts or typewriting or telegraphy or 
commercial subjects she might be interested and 
might do her work very acceptably. Descriptions 
of many cases of this kind have been made by 
students of these matters. Educational literature 
of recent years contains accounts of many girls 
who apparently had no interest in their school 
work but who changed completely in their atti- 
tude when their studies were changed. 

Arrest in Mental Development. — The girl de- 
scribed above is a year or two behind in her 
school work. It may be that she does not pos- 
sess normal intelligence. Sometimes a girl's 



74 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

mind seems to be arrested at the age of fourteen. 
It is as though her energies were directed out of 
intellectual into emotional channels. When this 
is the case, it is useless to expect that a girl can 
keep up with her school work or take an interest 
in it even. If there is any doubt about the matter, 
a test of intelligence should be made. A parent 
who is interested in this matter could learn how 
to make intelligence tests by reading a book on 
the measurement of intelligence. It would be well 
if all parents could read a book like this so that 
they might have some standard by which to esti- 
mate the development of the intelligence of their 
children. 

If it should be found that this girl has become 
arrested in her intellectual development, then the 
best way to treat her would be to train her for 
some form of concrete manual work in which she 
may be interested. Take telegraphy for instance ; 
this is a subject well suited to girls, and there are 
many opportunities open for them now. A girl 
who might not be able to master abstract gram- 
mar and formal history and algebra might be 
able to learn telegraphy or typewriting or mil- 
linery or dressmaking fairly well. 

The Non-Social Girl. — We may glance now at 
the traits of a different type of girl — the non- 
social type. A concrete instance will bring the 
type before us. 

*'My oldest daughter, as an infant, was a fine 



GIRL PROBLEMS 75 

child but with peculiar tendencies. If hurt she 
wanted no sympathy — the usual petting and 
caressing made her furious. Although the ob- 
ject of our affection she seemed never to respond. 
If I went away she never expressed joy at my 
return; and when she grew older she objected to 
being kissed in public. At seven years of age a 
friend who is a psychologist said, 'What Gertrude 
needs for development is hero worship.' She is 
now fifteen and we have never found the hero. 
She hates to meet people, but loves to go off by 
herself and read. She is a good student but 
seems to regard her teachers as natural enemies. 
Instead of enjoying the present she is constantly 
planning for the future. 

'*! have been a pretty strict mother — insisting 
that she meet people, that she play the piano, 
dance and recite, instead of reading stories, going 
to the movies and eating fudge." 

This girl is an unusual type, but one does meet 
her kind occasionally. Since she has possessed 
these traits from the beginning it is evidence that 
they are not due to any methods of training, but 
rather to nature. 

Mothers often worry too much about their chil- 
dren — their daughters especially, because they do 
not dress according to the fashions, or do not 
dance enough, or try to win the boys, and so on. 
The girls may be having a good time among them- 
selves, and like an intellectual life, but the 



7« THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

mothers are more conscious of the social de- 
mands, and often are not themselves interested 
in intellectual activities. They probably have 
come to appreciate the value of giving a good 
deal of attention to social conventions, and so 
they keep at their daughters incessantly to do the 
same. 

The Non-Social Girl Should Not Be Coerced 
Into Social Activities. — If a girl is indifferent by 
nature to social conventions; if she likes to be 
alone and to read, why should she be coerced into 
participating in the usual social activities? Why 
should she try to make people like her? Isn't 
there a place for women who are not very particu- 
lar about whether individuals or society like 
them? Why shouldn't such a person go on de- 
veloping in an intellectual way? It is doubtful 
whether social interests can be awakened in such 
a girl until she gets out into life where she is 
made to realize by hard knocks, if she really has 
hard knocks, that she must like people and win 
them or be kept out of the game. One cannot 
cause her to be social by talking to her about it; 
she will be more likely to go just the other way 
if she nagged concerning it. 

A girl should not be coerced into meeting peo- 
ple, or taking part in social activities, or getting 
out into life, or dressing in accord with the styles. 
But if she should be sent away to school, say, or 
if this is not practicable if she should be given 



GIRL PROBLEMS 77 

a position in which, in order to succeed, she would 
have to be socially active, she would probably cul- 
tivate a certain amount of interest and skill in 
this direction. If she would not respond to an 
actual demand like this she would not profit by 
any kind of training. 

Age May Make a Girl More Social a^id Affec- 
tionate. — It is probable that when the girl de- 
scribed above is twenty she will have more feel- 
ing for her parents and people in general than 
she has now. Children at fifteen are pretty much 
wrapped up in themselves. Even if they are ex- 
pressive toward their parents they do not feel 
very profoundly devoted to them. This feeling 
of filial devotion develops later. A mother ought 
not to be too much distressed about a girl's ap- 
parent lack of affection for her. She has not yet 
begun to realize what the mother really means to 
her, what part she plays in her life. If she could 
go away from home for awhile and have contact 
with the world outside she would think more of 
her mother when she came back. And when she 
does go out into the world, let her make her own 
adjustments for a time. Don't be too much con- 
cerned about her. She will develop affection for 
her mother rather more readily if the latter does 
not worry about her than if she does. Many chil- 
dren are alienated because their parents fuss 
over them too much. 

The mother asks, having in mind her relation 



T8 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

to her daughter, ^' Shall I withdraw now and let 
her work out her salvation?" Emphatically yes, 
so far as any explicit training is concerned. The 
thing the mother can do is to arrange social con- 
tacts for the girl which will tend to put her at 
her ease, make her unconscious in the presence 
of others, and awaken her expressive nature. 
The mother cannot help her by commanding her 
to be expressive, or criticising her because she is 
not as social as the mother thinks she should be. 

She will soon go to college probably. If she 
does, she should join a sorority and thus come 
into intimate touch with a few people, at any rate. 
This experience will tend to modify her reserve, 
and to make her less self-conscious. Also it would 
help if she could have chums with whom she could 
be entirely at ease. 

But again, why should one be much concerned 
about such a girl? If she is content with her 
rather isolated life, if she finds satisfaction in 
her own reflections, why should one try to develop 
other interests? There certainly is a place in 
the world for persons who can be happy when 
they are working alone. Such persons will de- 
rive pleasure from achievement rather than from 
personal intercourse. If the girl in question is 
content with her present life, and if she is not a 
source of distress to others, then one may doubt 
the wisdom of trying to change her life funda- 
mentally. 



GIRL PROBLEMS 79 

The Higher Education of Girls. — Turning now 
to the education of girls it may be observed tliat 
it has only been recently, as such things go, that 
girls have been given the same privilege as boys 
in public schools. Originally schools were main- 
tained and administered for boys; girls were re- 
garded as interlopers. They are so considered in 
certain colleges still. Some of the old-line insti- 
tutions will not admit them on an equality with 
men. Even a few of the newer institutions have 
set up barriers against women students by limit- 
ing their number by statute, so that men will 
always give character to these institutions and 
be dominant in control of them. 

The history of modern education tells an illum- 
inating story of wt)man's ascendency in educa- 
tional activities and achievement. Even after 
women were admitted to colleges on a par with 
men they were not considered to be capable of 
attaining a high degree of scholarship. In a brief 
period, though, they have climbed to the highest 
point reached by men, and now they are crowding 
ahead of them. This has spread alarm among the 
conservative collegians. They have sent a danger 
signal throughout the country. Specifically, the 
governors of the Phi Beta Kappa society, admis- 
sion to which depends upon superior scholarship, 
have proposed that the number of women admitted 
should be arbitrarily limited. It is said that un- 
less a check is thus put upon the women, they will 



80 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

soon outnumber the men, and the society will be- 
come a feminine organization. 

Women Are Leading in Scholarship. — The Phi 
Beta Kappa society was founded and is main- 
tained in order to encourage scholarship and to 
confer distinction upon the intellectually superior 
students in colleges and universities. The fact 
that women are leading men in receiving Phi Beta 
Kappa honors is important as it bears upon the 
question of woman's brains as compared with 
man's. It is also significant since it indicates the 
new interests and ambitions of women in colleges 
and universities. Only in institutions hopelessly 
mired in tradition and prejudice is there still 
doubt regarding the capacity of women to profit 
by educational advantages of the highest order. 

But the keener thinkers in all institutions have 
some doubt about the desirability of women com- 
peting with men for scholarship honors in a cur- 
riculum constructed originally for men and still 
adapted mainly to their needs. If courses of 
study had been planned with respect to the inter- 
ests, tastes and needs of women as well as of 
men, it would be generally agreed that women 
might go as far as they would like in the acquisi- 
tion of knowledge and skill. But serious people 
often find themselves asking whether it is worth 
while for a girl to devote her time and energy 
during the most important period of life to the 
mastery of higher mathematics and foreign lang- 



GIRL PROBLEMS 81 

uages and technical science and philosophy in or- 
der to secure distinction in scholarship. Phi Beta 
Kappa honors would not be awarded to a girl stu- 
dent if she should devote time and energy to 
studies relating to the dominant interests in a 
woman's life. When the Phi Beta Kappa society 
was founded no one in the world believed that it 
required any high degree of intelligence to master 
knowledge pertaining to the management of a 
home or to child nature or to the arts of personal 
accomplishment. The women who are ambitious 
for distinction in scholarship quite generally 
avoid these latter fields and pursue the courses 
taken by men. There is some evidence that this 
results in alienating girls from the life for which 
nature intended them and in which they will gain 
the highest pleasure in the long run, and be of 
greatest use in the world. 

The Girl Student Is Insistent. — But the girl 
student is insistent. She is determined that there 
shall be no essential differentiation between her 
work and that of the man student. She has 
pushed her way into man-made institutions and 
the attitude of antagonism manifested by the men 
has only strengthened her resolution that she will 
not be shut out of any activities or denied any 
opportunities offered to men. In most higher 
institutions she is still contending for her rights 
as she sees them. The men students look upon her 
as an intruder; and even the faculty in some 



82 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

places let it be known that they regard women in 
their classes as disquieting to themselves and 
hostile to the interests of men students. The girl 
students are fighting for representation in stu- 
dent organizations, in student publications, and 
in all student activities. 

Suppose woman wins out in her present ambi- 
tion with regard to scholarship. Will she have 
attained what she is really aiming at? Any un- 
prejudiced student of human life realizes that 
there is one fundamental distinction between the 
masculine and the feminine nature. It was in- 
tended in the original plans that man should 
achieve. Mind and body are fashioned for achieve- 
ment. It was not ordered that man should be 
greatly conscious of or give much attention to 
personal accomplishments or appearance. In 
body and mind he was made to be dynamic. His 
customs, his institutions and his education have 
been largely shaped with respect to this dominat- 
ing object of his life. 

'Woman Must Win By Personal Accomplish- 
ment. — On the other hand, nature designed that 
woman should win more by personal accomplish- 
ment than by achievement. In mind, in tempera- 
ment, in body, woman was designed to be more 
concerned with self than is the case with man. 
The best results will undoubtedly follow if her 
education is worked out in accordance with her 
biological nature and needs than if it be framed 



GIRL PROBLEMS 83 

on the pattern of man's education. It would be 
better if she should strive for distinction in fem- 
inine rather than in masculine fields, whether in- 
tellectual or otherwise. 

The educational world is slowly but surely com- 
ing to appreciate the dilference between a man- 
made and a woman-made educational curriculum 
and educational regime. In the larger universities 
there is now opportunity for women to devote 
their time fully to subjects which relate more to 
feminine than to masculine interests and needs. 
There are studies, of course, which are equally 
well suited to men and to girl students; but take 
all fields of endeavor represented in a great uni- 
versity to-day, and most of the work best suited 
to the former is not best suited to the later. The 
sooner this fact is recognized so that honors will 
be given for superior work in any field, regardless 
of whether it relates mainly to the man's or main- 
ly to the woman's needs, the better it will be for 
woman especially. 

Education and Personal Attractiveness. — A 
mother recently presented her views at length on 
the education of girls. She said she would not 
send her daughter to a co-educational college be- 
cause she would not want her to take any account 
of boys during her educational course. She as- 
serted that a girl ' ' ought to think only of improv- 
ing her mind and not of pleasing the other sex. ' ' 
She maintained that if a girl had a well-developed 



84 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

mind she would possess the strongest and most 
desirable quality. * ' The girl who attracts because 
of her personal appearance is merely superficial, 
and such attraction will not be enduring,'* she 
concluded. 

Would that this were wholly true. But it is not 
more than a half truth at best. Unfortunately, 
perhaps, boys and men are determined in this 
matter pretty largely by their biological traits. 
They are still influenced to a large extent by the 
personal qualities of the gentler sex. They do 
not ignore intellectual and ethical qualities, but 
these, after all, are secondary in their estimation. 
Beauty or charm makes the strongest appeal. It 
always has done so, and it will probably continue 
to do so for some generations to come. 

A parent or teacher who would train a girl so 
that she would be indifferent to personal improve- 
ment would make a serious mistake. On the other 
hand, it would be just as serious a mistake to train 
her so that she would give attention to little else 
but her appearance. The aim should be to have 
her try to attain a well-disciplined and illumi- 
nated interior, and an esthetic and agreeable 
exterior. If the one be developed to the neglect 
of the other the girl will be placed at a disadvan- 
tage thereby. 

Those who have had an opportunity to study 
the social, intellectual and moral life of different 
nations agree that in America the problem of 



GIRL PROBLEMS 85 

developing the girl's mind while at the same time 
helping her to make herself attractive personally 
has been solved better than it has in any other 
country. The number of girls in co- educational 
colleges and universities is increasing at a rapid 
rate, and these girls do just as fine intellectual 
work as the men ; indeed, they are excelling them 
in some lines of study. But while cultivating the 
mind, they also cultivate the bodily graces and the 
arts of pleasing adornment. 

If it should happen that girls with highly- 
trained minds should not attain physical attract- 
iveness, it would result that those who have little 
or no education would become favorites, and the 
intellectual type would be gradually eliminated. 
What we should do here in America is to train the 
girl intellectually so far as we can, but at the 
same time to conserve and develop her personal 
charms, and show her how she can make the most 
of what nature has given her. Happily the schools 
are doing more in this direction to-day than they 
did in the past, but still they have only begun to 
teach girls how they can best realize their natural 
desires to be attractive in the highest sense of the 
term. Many women are unhappy throughout life 
because they have not solved this problem; and 
others, relying upon their unguided instincts, go 
to extremes in one way or another, and produce 
only disagreeable and bizarre effects. 

The Problem of Clothes.^- Favents are often 



86 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

distressed because young people, especially girls 
in the teens, give so much attention to clothes. A 
parent writes that she has a girl fourteen years 
of age who has * ' clothes on the brain. ' ' This dis- 
ease attacks boys in a mild form, at least, a little 
later, though it does not go as hard with them nor 
last as long as it does with girls. 

During the period of youth nature says to every 
normal girl: ''You must give attention to your 
appearance. You must make yourself attractive. 
If you fail in this, you will be left in the lurch. 
You must dress so as to please, and so as to dis- 
tinguish yourself from the crowd. In this way 
you will be noticed ; people will be drawn to you, 
and you will be likely to win out in the social 
contest.'* 

There is no need for a parent to worry too 
much about the adolescent girl who thinks a great 
deal about clothes. Of course, if this begins very 
early, it will distract the attention from more im- 
portant matters. If a girl could go up to fifteen 
or sixteen and a boy up to eighteen or nineteen 
without thinking very much about appearance, it 
would be best for both of them in the end. But 
it is a biological law that every normal girl, and 
in a moderate degree every normal boy, should 
think much about personal adornment during the 
teens. 

Nothing good can be accomplished by merely 
telling young people that they must not be ''fool- 



GIRL PROBLEMS 87 

ish" or ** silly" or ''vain" in their desire to be 
attractive in appearance. Such treatment will 
only aggravate the difficulty. The evil, if it is an 
evil, must be remedied by substitution. One fre- 
quently sees girls, and boys, too, in college who 
give a sufficient amount of attention to the subject 
of clothes, but who are immensely interested in 
their college work, in athletics, and in wholesome 
social life in which clothes do not play a leading 
part. Such persons could not be said to have 
"clothes on the brain," nor would anyone think 
they were careless or indifferent in the matter of 
dress. 

The Pressure of Artificial Customs. — But there 
is another and more serious phase of the subject. 
A certain girl had gone through the grade school 
and the high school, securing a high record in 
every study. She graduated at the head of a 
large class. She left her home to attend a co- 
educational college. She joined a sorority, the 
members of which have the reputation of "keep- 
ing up with the styles." The girl undertook her 
college work in a serious way, but she soon had 
invitations constantly to participate in the social 
activities of the college, and she discovered in due 
course that in order to keep up with her friends 
it would be necessary for her to give more atten- 
tion to dress than she had done in the past. 
Society in this college is about the same as it is in 
the world, which requires that girls who are "in 



88 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

the swim" must have a variety of garments for 
different occasions. The girl we are considering 
realized that if she did not study the problem of 
clothes a great deal she could not keep abreast of 
the swiftly changing fashions. She would have 
been glad to give her attention mainly to the in- 
tellectual work of the college, and to such social 
life as did not depend upon thinking unduly 
about clothes, but the pressure was so great that 
she was more and more led away from intel- 
lectual pursuits, until now a large part of her 
energy is devoted to trying to secure clothes 
which will be up-to-the-minute in style. She is 
still endeavoring, however, to make a good record 
in her college work, and the result is that her 
energies are running down to a low point. If she 
keeps up the pace throughout her college career 
she will be so depleted at the end that it will be a 
long time before she can utilize the intellectual 
training which she has received in college. 

The girl realizes that some of her new garments 
make her look freakish, but still they are in style. 
It seems a tragedy that she should spend so much 
of her time and energy in securing clothes which 
are unsuited to her particular style of beauty. 
And why is it necessary? Because the women 
who set the pace are spending most of their 
energy and intellect in this direction, and a sensi- 
tive girl does not want to be left out of considera- 
tion in a social way. One would think the pres- 



GIRL PROBLEMS 89 

sure from the world could be kept out of college, 
but this is not the case. In most of the educa- 
tional institutions to which women are admitted, 
keeping up with the styles plays a dominant role 
in the life and work of a large proportion of the 
girls. They are often ridiculous in their eccentric 
garments, and their fellow students laugh at 
them, but still they would rather be laughed at 
than be out of style. They would indeed rather 
be out of the world than be out of fashion. This 
is a very profound trait of human nature, and so 
long as the women out in the world devote their 
time largely to securing new garments, the college 
girl will do the same. There will be exceptions, 
but the majority will try to keep up with the 
fashionable procession. 

Reduce the Demands of Fashion. — The ulti- 
mate success of women in colleges and universi- 
ties will depend upon whether it will be possible 
to make the pressure from the fashions of the 
world less urgent than it now is. Of course, there 
are some girls in every educational institution 
who ignore this pressure. They are the ones, 
generally speaking, who achieve distinction in the 
proper work of the college or university; but 
where there is one of this sort there may be half- 
dozen of the other sort. This half-dozen who 
make no record in intellectual activities may have 
native ability, but they devote their talents to 
puzzling over the questions of dress instead of 



90 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

mastering history, or household arts, or educa- 
tion. 

Here is a cause which might well engage the 
attention of women who are looking for some- 
thing to reform. One thing is certain, the higher 
education of women will not be a tremendous 
success if girl students must devote a large part 
of their intellectual activities and their vitalities 
to the strain and tension of constantly changing 
the styles of their raiment. Of course, no one 
will interpret what is said herein to mean that 
girls in higher institutions should not make them- 
selves as attractive as can be done. This is pre- 
cisely what they should do; but making oneself 
attractive is one thing, and keeping abreast of the 
styles is another and altogether different thing. 

The Social Life of the Girl in School and College. 
— Let us glance now at another aspect of the life 
of the girl in school and college. She has sought 
to provide for her social needs by establishing 
secret societies. It is generally recognized now 
that the members of a college sorority are 
brought into more intimate contact with one an- 
other than they could be if they remained outside 
of a secret society. Non-sorority girls in the 
larger co-educational institutions have established 
various organizations of a social, literary, athletic, 
and religious character, but the members of these 
groups are only loosely bound together, and a girl 
in becoming a member of any group does not as- 



GIRL PROBLEMS 91 

sume obligations of an exacting or impressive 
character. Membership in one group does not 
exclude a girl from other groups. But member- 
ship in a secret society practically limits a girl's 
close friendships to her society, and sometimes 
it excludes her from attachments with literary, 
religious, and similar societies. A secret Greek- 
letter society demands more of its members than 
do non-secret societies. It is jealous of their 
affections and aims to monopolize their affilia- 
tions. 

Membership in a sorority gives opportunity for 
the cultivation of social graces and skill which 
usually cannot be secured outside. Also, young 
girls unaccustomed to life away from home are 
frequently steadied and guided by membership in 
a sorority, especially one which is organized so 
that the older and experienced members assume 
direct responsibility for the conduct of the 
younger and inexperienced ones. 

Disadvantages of Secret Societies. — There are 
some disadvantages connected with membership 
in sororities. It is not unusual to find girls who 
do not form any friendships outside of their own 
special "set." There is probably more acute 
rivalry between sororities for social prestige than 
between men's societies. Girls often strive in- 
tensely to make their respective sororities as 
prominent as possible, and jealousy is likely to 
flourish under these conditions. One hears of 



92 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

girls who before going to college were close 
friends, but after the same girls had joined dif- 
ferent sororities in the college they lost their 
attachment for one another and even became 
jealous rivals. 

Not only do the sororities frequently alienate 
one-time friends, but rival cliques often form 
within the sororities themselves. It is apparently 
not so common for a group of thirty or forty 
girls to be joined together in a secret society and 
live together in peace, harmony, and good-will, 
as it is for boys to do this in similar circum- 
stances. While a sorority may present a unified 
and harmonious aspect to the outside world, still 
there may be bickerings, jealousies and intense 
animosities within, which never would develop if 
girls were not thrown together so intimately. 
The closer and more exclusive the organization 
the greater is the likelihood of the formation of 
cliques, with the development of personal an- 
tagonisms. 

So it not infrequently happens that while pre- 
sumably a sorority provides facilities for the de- 
velopment of intimate friendships among all its 
members, still the number of such friendships 
formed by an individual member may be not more 
than six or eight, — simply the number in a par- 
ticular clique. One clique may not have much to 
do with any other one. Being bound so closely 
together they grate upon one another's nerve ap- 



GIRL PROBLEMS 93 

parently, and easily become suspicious of one an- 
other's motives. 

Should a Girl Join a Sorority f — Should a girl 
who eiiters a co-educational college join a soror- 
ity then! It depends. The majority of girls 
would be extremely unhappy if they were de- 
prived of membership. On the whole, it might 
be better if all sororities could be abolished, and 
if in their place could be established more loosely- 
organized societies in which the temptation to 
develop cliques would not be so great, and which 
would not circumscribe a girl's social contact so 
closely as sororities tend to do. But in institu- 
tions where they exist, a socially-inclined girl will 
probably be aided by membership in a sorority. 
In most colleges and universities such member- 
ship confers social prestige, and practically all 
girls would prefer to undergo the handicaps of 
membership than to forego the thing which ap- 
peals to many of them as of great importance in 
college life, — popularity in a social way. 

The most encouraging feature respecting sor- 
orities is that that they are growing in breadth. 
In the stronger colleges and universities there 
are inter-sorority societies which are enlarging the 
sympathies and extending the acquaintanceship 
of sorority members. In at least a few of the state 
universities there is genuine friendship develop- 
ing between the members of the different groups. 
Together they undertake worthy enterprises in 



94 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

furthering the interests of girls in their re- 
spective institutions. They are endowing scholar- 
ships for deserving students. They are helping 
to establish cooperative homes for self-support- 
ing girls. And in other ways they are fostering 
movements of a democratic character. In any 
institution in which the sororities are conducted 
on these broad, helpful lines, only good can come 
from them. 



CHAPTER IV 

WHEN THE TENDER PASSION APPEARS 

Social Relations of Boys and Girls. — Before 
the age of twelve or thirteen, boys and girls think 
of one another simply as playmates, or, perhaps, 
as competitors or rivals for the same favors. A 
boy of this age will speak in a commendatory way 
of a girl of his acquaintance if she can take a part 
in a game, or if she is ready and resourceful in 
the enterprises in which children are interested. 
But if she can not run fast or dodge skillfully, he 
is apt to ignore her or say uncomplimentary 
things about her. The writer has been listening 
to J. talking about the girls in his graded school. 
What he has to say about them is much the same 
in principle as what other boys say of girls. He 
always sniffs at the mention of a certain girl. 
He calls her a ''crybaby," or a ''milk-baby," or 
a "fraidicat," or a "tittle-tattle." His whole 
feeling of her is summed up in the one phrase 
"she is no good." She does well in school, and 
enjoys the friendship of her teachers; but she 
does not enjoy the rough ways of boys. They like 
to plague her by telling her they are going to run 

95 



96 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

over her when she is on the walk in front of the 
boys. They are quite expert in teasing her so she 
is not at all happy in their presence. The boys 
do not seem to consider her sex at all. They have 
no chivalric feeling. They simply do not care for 
her because she can not participate in the games 
and plays which interest them. She tends to 
break up any games she gets into because she 
always wants the boys to play in a less vigorous 
way then they wish to. She can not hold her 
own, and as they say, they '^ have no time for 
her." 

J. has a somewhat similar feeling for another 
girl in his room who cries on the slightest provo- 
cation. He has done his part to develop this 
peculiarity, although one can not make him ac- 
knowledge that he has done anything mean in his 
treatment of her. He feels that she ought to be 
tantalized because of her ''silly," whimpering 
ways. Some of the adults who know the girl 
sympathize with her because she is not in a good 
nervous condition. These adults take particular 
pains not to annoy or frighten her in any way. 
But it is just the reverse with the boys in J.'s 
group. They do not seem to have any tender feel- 
ing for such a girl, and of course they would not 
have it either for a boy who possessed her charac- 
teristics. 

There is another girl in J. 's class at school who 
possesses characteristics almost diametrically op- 




Listening- to music is better tlian dancing. 




This is better tlian ball-room dancing for boys and girls. 




Basket ball is a good game for adolescent girls. 



WHEN THE TENDER PASSION APPEARS 97 

posite to those of tlie first two girls mentioned. 
She is a "tom-boy." She can run as fast as any 
of the boys. She orders them around, and she 
will not give in to them on any occasion. She can 
talk as loud as they can, and can use as dynamic 
expressions as they do. She is good at all sorts 
of games; and she really has a boy's traits with 
respect to physical skill and endurance. But she 
gets on J.'s nerves. While he likes a girl who 
can play games and not whimper over rough 
treatment, at the same time he cannot endure 
one who is as much of a boy as he is himself, and 
especially one who plays the role of a boy. So he 
has uncomplimentary things to say about this 
latter girl too. He says, — "She thinks she owns 
everything; she wants to 'lord it over everybody'; 
she thinks she is the Svhole shooting match' "; 
and he has command of a very choice lot of expres- 
sive figures of speech designed to convey the idea 
that she feels she can do better than the rest of 
them in whatever she undertakes, and she intends 
to be at the head of the ''gang." 

There are still other girls in J.'s room who 
come in between the extremes mentioned above. 
They can play games fairly well, and they do not 
break up the group when they play together be- 
cause they do not object to the rough ways of the 
boys. They do not '' tell tales out of school," and 
so the boys feel they can be trusted to be loyal to 
the group. This is not at all true of the first girls 



98 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

described. But while the boys in J.'s group do 
frequently play with some of the girls who har- 
monize with the group quite well, nevertheless 
the boys would rather play by themselves; they 
do not spontaneously choose to take the girls into 
their games. It is only when they need them to 
fill out a game that they invite them. They 
hardly ever go over to join the girl groups ; they 
always bring the girls into the games which they 
initiate themselves. 

The Beginning of the Sentimental Relation. — 
'V\'Tien these boys reach the age of fifteen they will 
assume an altogether different attitude toward 
girls. The latter will no longer be regarded as 
playfellows simply. A particular girl will not be 
selected or discarded on the basis of her capacity 
to endure pain or her ability to play games. After 
the age of seven, boys go on developing team 
spirit and perfecting themselves in games and 
plays. On the other hand, girls as they develop 
do not take so much interest in games. They do 
not to any large extent develop the team spirit. 
At fifteen they are not interested in competitive 
games as the boys are. As they grow up they 
become more personal and individual in their 
feelings and activities, while the boys develop 
the group instinct more fully. A boy of fifteen 
w^ould not expect a girl to be a good associate or 
competitor in games. If he would play with her 
it would be to please her rather than to exercise 



WHEN THE TENDER PASSION APPEARS 99 

his own abilities and powers in an interesting 
way. 

What is the relation of the boy to the girl at 
this time? Mainly a sentimental one. He is 
interested in girls now on account of their per- 
sonal characteristics, their appearance, and their 
liveliness of manner. A girl is not chosen as a 
favorite primarily on account of her intellectual 
or ethical qualities. But the point to be impressed 
is that the girl attracts the boy primarily because 
of outward characteristics. The boy will show 
favors to the '^ pretty" girl, whereas he may 
neglect altogether one of plain features and gen- 
eral appearance but who is intellectually and so- 
cially superior to the "handsome" girl. 

The Kind of Boy Who Attracts the Girl. — 
What qualities in the boy will attract the girl at 
this time? The good, scholarly boy usually makes 
but little impression upon her. It is the boy on 
the football team or on some other athletic team 
who appeals to her imagination. She likes the 
hero type of boy, one who is physically vigorous. 
A quiet, studious fellow is not spectacular enough 
to win her regard. She is not drawn toward the 
scholar; but she may be drawn toward the other 
fellow, though he may be a dullard in books, and 
though he may be skating on thin ice ethically and 
morally. But he possesses certain marked mascu- 
line qualities which make a strong appeal to the 
girl. 



100 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

It should be remarked in passing that in the 
management of any school in which there are boys 
and girls from twelve up to sixteen or seventeen, 
it is important to bring the leaders among the 
girls and among the boys into sympathy with the 
spirit of the school. A girl who strongly attracts 
boys can raise Cain in a school if she sets herself 
against the teacher. She will have the boys on 
her side in eveiy contest, and she can induce 
them, without ever asking them so to do, to make 
life a burden for the teachers. To a less extent 
the hero among the boys can turn the sympathy 
of a school against the teacher if he so tries. 
It will always be a hard role for a teacher if he 
cannot make the most attractive girl and the most 
vigorous and dynamic boy his friends, or at least 
induce them to work in harmony with him. It will 
be impossible for a teacher to hold out for a long 
period against the general sentiment of his school. 
In the end the group will triumph if it is fairly 
well unified, and takes every opportunity to hector 
the teacher and oppose his authority. 

Amorousness in a School. — A principal of a 
grammar school writes that the relations between 
the boys and the girls in his school are unwhole- 
some. Even as early as the sixth grade every 
boy and girl has a "steady." The talk of the 
school relates quite largely to amorous and even 
lewd attachments. Boys and girls go off together 
all hours of the day and night, and the principal 



WHEN THE TENDER PASSION APPEARS 101 

thinks they go beyond proper limits in their rela- 
tions with each other. The work of the school is 
low because so much of the attention of pupils is 
given to amorous matters. The people in the 
community do not seem to mind it. They say it 
has ''always been so," and it is not different in 
that school from what it is in others. The prin- 
cipal is new in this position and he says he does 
not think such conditions exist in schools else- 
where. 

This is an unusual case. The explanation is 
that it "has always been so." If one could un- 
ravel the history of the thing he would probably 
find that the adults of the community really 
started it. In some communities the chief topic 
of conversation is amorous relations. Many of 
the people are morbid on the subject. Young per- 
sons growing up in such a community have amor- 
ousness suggested to them on every occasion. It 
is no wonder that they become sophisticated too 
early in respect to this matter. 

Suggestion plays the chief role in the develop- 
ment of sex feeling. If boys and girls could be 
brought up in a community where there was little 
or no suggestion of amorousness they would not 
develop this feeling early, and it would not be 
intense at any time. This is directly contrary to 
the popular belief that in the course of develop- 
ment this feeling will develop wholly from within, 
and that it is not at all under the control of out- 



102 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

side influences. The popular belief is fundamen- 
tally wrong on this point. 

In some schools most of the traditions and talk 
relate to amorous matters. One generation of 
pupils passes it on to the next. It requires posi- 
tive, dynamic, constructive measures to divert the 
attention of pupils in such a school into non-sex 
channels. There is no solution of the problem 
except substitution of more wholesome interests 
for the morbid amorous ones, and especially is it 
necessary to control the suggestions in the school, 
on the street, in the moving picture theatre, and 
so on, that play upon the young so that they will 
not relate to sex matters. 

The aim of parent, teacher, and custodian of 
morals in every place must be to eliminate un- 
wholesome suggestion. Where this has been ac- 
complished successfully amorousness is not a 
serious problem. Boys and girls grow up practic- 
ally to maturity looking upon one another as 
friends, companions, comrades, playfellows, be- 
cause their relations have been along these lines. 
The writer has been able to observe the develop- 
ment of a number of boys and girls who afford 
proof of this principle. In the same community 
are other boys and girls who have been subjected 
to lewd suggestion in conversation, in burlesque 
theatres, in their reading, etc., and they have been 
influenced unwholesomely by it. The boys and 
girls who have retained the relation of comrade- 



WHEN THE TENDER PASSION APPEARS 103 

ship up through the teens are more vigorous and 
dynamic in every way than those whose thoughts 
and energies have run off into the amorous route 
early in the teens, so that they have not developed 
vigorous intellectual, athletic and social interests. 

The problem of the reformer is to keep out of 
sight and out of hearing all matters that incite the 
amorous tendencies. Nature will not develop 
them in the early teens in a dominating way un- 
less they are excited from without. 

Comradeship Rather Than Amorousness in the 
Early Teens. — Most parents have sooner or later 
to meet the problem presented in the following 
letter : 

** There are a number of parents in our com- 
munity who let their young boys and girls go to 
evening parties that are not chaperoned by adult 
persons. The ages of the boys and girls are from 
twelve to fifteen. Each boy takes a girl to the 
party and takes her home again. At the parties 
they play games, dance, have a lunch and then 
go home at about half-past eleven. Is this a 
wholesome situation ? ' ' 

Boys and girls ought not to be greatly con- 
cerned about one another at the age of twelve, 
thirteen, fourteen, or fifteen. At sixteen or sev- 
enteen it is inevitable that sex attraction should 
begin to play a prominent role in the relations of 
boys and girls, and proper provision should be 
made for indulging this interest. It would be 



104 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

better if boys and girls could go on hikes and 
picnics frequently rather than to spend much 
time in dancing as they often do. Also it would 
be better if they would be together prmcipally 
during the day-time rather than during the night- 
time. They should learn how to cooperate m 
their plays and in their work. They should be 
good companions and playfellows at sixteen or 
seventeen. Dancing does not cultivate comrade- 
ship so much as it arouses intense feeling. Un- 
fortunately in many places, boys and girls seem 
to be ill-at-ease in one another's presence unless 
they are dancing. But when groups of boys and 
girls go off on picnics or on nature-study trips, 
or when they work together in the laboratories in 
the school, they need no chaperoning. There is 
little likelihood of improper relations developmg 
when boys and girls are together in groups and 
engaged in wholesome activities. But it is rather 
different with dancing. This activity is over- 
exciting to many boys and girls, and it occurs un- 
der conditions which tend to weaken self-restraint. 
When Chaperoning is Necessary.— ¥ot this 
reason, chaperons are necessary at dances, and it 
would be beneficial if boys and girls . could be 
chaperoned on their way home too. They really 
need chaperones more on the way from the dance 
than they do at the dance itself. At the same time 
too much chaperonage is likely to develop the 
very evils which it is designed to correct. Boys 



WHEN THE TENDER PASSION APPEARS 105 

and girls should not be given the impression that 
they are being spied upon. The best way would 
be to arrange it so that they should go directly 
home after a dance. There should be no loitering, 
no visiting ice-cream parlors, no joy riding, no 
strolling. "Straight home" should be the invari- 
able rule. If this could be carried out, it would 
be advisable to get along with a miminum of 
chaperonage. 

In dealing with the problem under considera- 
tion it should be kept in mind that the typical boy 
or girl in the teens prefers the allurements of the 
ballroom to almost everything else. The dance 
seems to be attracting young people more and 
more strongly every year. And once a youth 
comes under the influence of the dance, he never 
knows when to stop. In many places there is con- 
stant conflict between teachers and parents on the 
one side and boys and girls on the other in regard 
to the hour when their dancing parties must term- 
inate. There is the same struggle between fac- 
ulty and students in the college and the univer- 
sity. Young people, if left to themselves, lose 
their sense of proportion completely under the 
seductive influence of the ballroom. 

There is a fascination, too, for both sexes in 
promenading the streets at night. Usually there 
is color and stir and novelty on the streets. There 
is also adventure. Generally the life of the streets 
at night is adapted to excite the young and it is 



106 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

often SO planned, because when they are excited 
they will be likely to indulge their impulses, and 
those who provide the means of indulgence will be 
enriched thereby. The boy especially is apt to be 
unduly aroused by what he sees and hears on the 
street. Most evil habits are formed in connection 
with street experiences at night. When young peo- 
ple are excited by this kind of life, they crave 
further excitement. 

A person, and especially a youth, in a highly 
stimulated condition is not likely to let down 
easily, and he will seek artificial stimulation to 
keep up his nervous exhilaration. This law of 
human nature is seen in adult life as well as in 
youth. Those who go the pace crave strong stim- 
ulants. The actor, for instance, who is keyed up 
by his part often cannot leave the stage and go 
calmly home. He must have a drink or go to the 
cabaret show where the sounds and sights keep up 
his nervous excitation. 

. The Problem of the Dance. — The chief problem 
of parents and teachers in having youth keep rea- 
sonable hours arises in relation to the dance. In 
American life young persons have got into the 
habit of going late to their dances and staying 
until early morning hours. This practice, if per- 
sisted in, will work harm to body and character. 
No boy or grl in the teens should be up later than 
ten o 'clock at night except on rare occasions. Ex- 
cesses of every sort in amusements flourish after 



WHEN THE TENDER PASSION APPEARS 107 

ten o^clock rather than before. The later the 
hour, the greater the danger of undue excitement 
with lack of proper restraint. The youth whose 
amusements keep him up frequently beyond ten 
o'clock is in the way of going astray, because he 
will be tempted constantly to indulgence of his 
primitive passions. But the youth who habitually 
is at home and in bed by ten o 'clock stands a good 
chance of holding his impulses in check. College 
fellows who drink and indulge in vice get started 
in the late hours of the night. Dissipation rarely 
begins in the early evening. 

Late Hours Injurious. — In every community 
the parents should agree that all parties for 
young people should stop at ten o'clock. Only 
evil can result in the long run unless this rule is 
followed unwaveringly. Young people will ad- 
vance all sorts of arguments for breaking over 
now and again, but they will soon become content 
with the plan if they see that they must conform 
to it. They will be happier in the end if they stop 
dancing by ten than if they go on until one or 
two in the morning. They will not be any more 
satisfied at two o'clock than at ten o'clock. 

Parents should support teachers in their efforts 
to control the amusements of the young, especi- 
ally dancing. Unfortunately, some parents delib- 
erately encourage their children to lead an exces- 
sive party life because this seems to give them 
social distinction and prestige. A mother in a 



108 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

middle western town recently had a daughter who 
graduated from the eighth grade. In order to 
celebrate this achievement the mother gave a 
dancing party for the girl. The young people 
danced until half-past twelve, when they had sup- 
per. They were not home until two o 'clock. This 
is, of course, an unusual case, but it set a bad 
example. It would have been better for the 
mother to have given a party in which the chil- 
dren would have engaged in games and plays dur- 
ing the afternoon. 

The Dance Problem is Ahvays a Pressing One. 
— There has apparently been no time since civil- 
ization began that people have not discussed the 
question of dancing. It is probable that the ma- 
jority of adults to-day think it would be better if 
young people would not dance as much as they do, 
and especially would not indulge in the types of 
dances which are fashionable now. The writer 
knows of many communities in which the min- 
isters, as well as others, are violently opposed to 
dancing, and they attempt by various means to 
suppress it. 

The ball-room is undoubtedly a source of evil 
to many young people, — particularly so in our 
day because of the prevailing methods of danc- 
ing, which encourage extreme intimacy. But it is 
significant that these new dances have become 
very popular in the face of vigorous opposition 
from ministers, teachers, and others. This fact 



WHEN THE TENDER PASSION APPEARS 109 

should impress anyone who wishes to reduce the 
evils of the dance with the impotency of our usual 
methods of dealing with it. No one ever stopped 
dancing by threatening young people with ever- 
lasting torment if they indulge in it. Parents 
often say to their children: ''You can't dance. 
You must stay at home instead of going to the 
ball-room." Parents who pursue these methods 
fail more often than they succeed and they are 
apt to develop antagonisms between themselves 
and their children. 

The people in a western city recently had the 
teacher of physical culture dismissed because she 
taught folk-dancing in the schools. The board of 
education forbade the use of school buildings for 
dancing of any kind at any time or by pupils of 
any age. These good people made a serious 
blunder, and they now appreciate it. Commercial 
dances have developed with great fury in that 
city. 

Constructive Treatment Alone Will Correct the 
Evil. — No evil has ever been corrected simply by 
condemning those who practice it. This is espe- 
cially true of the dance. It has a peculiar fascina- 
tion, and any young person who has felt the thrill 
of it is not likely to be dissuaded from seeking a 
repetition of it by threatenings from any source. 
Is there any way then that people can be re- 
strained in respect to the dance? Only by diver- 
sion; not by repression. If a boy has an oppor- 



110 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

tunity to go to a playground or gymnasium and 
engage in competitive games with his fellows he 
will ordinarily stay away from the ball-room. 
Also if he can have access to a swimming pool, if 
he can attend a good moving picture show in the 
school or church building, — in short if he has an 
opportunity to do anything wholesome which ap- 
peals to his active social and motor interests his 
attention will be diverted from the dance hall. 

The writer has been making observations in a 
number of towns and cities throughout the coun- 
try regarding the extent to which young people 
use church facilities during the week, and espe- 
cially during evenings. He has found that in a 
few places churches provide swimming pools, 
basket ball courts, bowling alleys, reading rooms, 
game rooms, and so on. It is difficult in such 
places to provide for all the young people who 
want to take advantage of these facilities, which 
indicates how much they are needed. But in eight 
out of ten communities the churches make no pro- 
vision for the social or dynamic interests of 
young people. 

In some places the school buildings are open 
during the evenings, and opportunities are pro- 
vided for the indulgence of the natural instincts 
and impulses of the young. Wherever this is done 
young people do not crave the ball-room ; they go 
to the school center instead. This suggests the 
way in which the dance evil can be controlled, — by 



WHEN THE TENDER PASSION APPEARS HI 

positive, constructive treatment, rather than by 
mere prohibition or censure. 

Is the High School a Breeding Place for Vicef — 
The writer has never found a person who has been 
able to furnish accurate data showing that vice is 
rampant in the high school. Wlien questioned, 
people who complain about the morals of the high 
school say that they have heard such and such per- 
sons say that vicious practices are very common. 
They do not themselves know of any definite in- 
stance of vicious conduct, but they do know of per- 
sons who know of other persons who have heard 
some one say that the boys and girls in the high 
school indulge in vicious practice without much 
restraint. 

It would be a miracle if in a large high school 
there were not boys and girls who did occasionally 
go wrong, but investigations have been made in 
certain large high schools which rumor says are 
''honey-combed with vice," and it has been proven 
that these rumors are in reality false. In one high 
school the newspapers recently reported that 
moral conditions were exceedingly bad. They 
claimed that many of the girls were compelled to 
leave the schools for maternity hospitals, that the 
boys were under the care of physicians, and so on. 
A careful investigation was made by the dean of 
girls and the boys' physical director and it was 
found that the accusations against the school were 
utterly without foundation. The stories had their 



112 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

origin in a case of wrong doing by a boy and girl 
who had formerly been in the school, but who had 
had no connection with it for two-and-a-half years. 
It is probable that the tales about vicious conduct 
in other high schools have no more foundation in 
fact than the stories concerning the school 
referred to. 

Benefits of Co-education. — No reader should 
interpret what is said above to mean that it is not 
necessary for parents and teachers to safeguard 
boys and girls in high schools, by establishing rea- 
sonable regulations so as to prevent the develop- 
ment of too great intimacy among them. But the 
American high school has accomplished more than 
any other institution in the world in the way of de- 
veloping friendship and comradeship among boys 
and girls. It has removed artificial barriers which 
in other countries make boys and girls after they 
reach the teens strangers to each other. It has 
given the girl a chance to play a part in the ac- 
tivities of the world. It has broken down conven- 
tional restrictions which have limited the freedom 
of girls and of women. The experience and train- 
ing which girls have received in co-educational 
higii schools have enabled them to go to and fro in 
the world without any hestitation. They can take 
care of themselves wherever they are placed. The 
American girl, mainly because of her training in 
the public high school, has gained resourceful- 
ness, courage and efficiency in every-day affairs. 



WHEN THE TENDER PASSION APPEARS 113 

These are tremendous advantages and we must 
not permit anything to interfere with the free- 
dom and frankness of social relations of our high 
schools. We must see to it that girls have even 
greater freedom of action in the future than they 
have had in the past in these schools. We must 
resist any attempt to segregate boys and girls 
too rigorously. This does not mean that they 
should not be separated in some classes. It is de- 
sirable that boys and girls should work separately 
in certain subjects. But the spirit of our high 
schools should be co-educational. Just as far as 
possible, boys and girls should develop comrade- 
ship and fellowship with each other. In a well- 
managed high school sentimentality and amor- 
ousness will not become prominent. Boys and 
girls will have enough work to do together so 
that sex feeling will not be unrestrained. Teach- 
ers in high schools are carefully studying the 
problem of adjusting the relations of boys and 
girls so that they will feel free in one another's 
presence, so that they will gain an understanding 
of each other, and so that they will learn to be 
together without undue consciousness of sex traits 
and sex differences. 

Should a Mother Pick Out a Boy's Girl Asso- 
ciates? — In this connection the question of the 
boy and his girl companions arises. Should a 
mother pick out a boy 's girl associates, or should 
the boy have the sole voice in this matter himself? 



114 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

This question was recently propounded to a 
group of thirty women. Most of them did not 
like to say that parents should choose the boy's 
girl companions, but yet they thought a boy 
should not be given complete freedom to do this 
for himself. As a matter of fact, the majority of 
the women — not all of them, though — who wrestled 
with the problem are in the habit of telling their 
boys what girls they should visit and which ones 
they should take to parties. 

If there is one thing more than another that 
nature has implanted deep in a boy's nature it is 
his desire to be with girls whom he likes. Nature 
has so constructed a boy that when he is required 
to show favors to a girl he does not like he will 
be in a rebellious and repugnant attitude all the 
time, whether he reveals it outwardly or not. It 
would be just as profitable for an adult to bay 
at the moon as to try to develop in a boy con- 
sideration for a girl whom he does not like. This 
is not a matter that can be controlled by advice 
or exhortation. 

How Guidance Can Be Exercised. — At the same 
time there is some danger in permitting the boy 
to find his own girl companions without any 
guidance from his elders ; but there are different 
ways in which this guidance can be exerted. The 
most effective way is for the parents to determine 
the circle of the boy's girl friends without letting 
him know what is going on. A parent ought but 



WHEN THE TENDER PASSION APPEARS 115 

rarely to deal directly with the boy's relations 
with girl associates. But parents can to a large 
extent determine the group of girls among whom 
the boy will find his associates. They cannot 
tell him which one in the group to select for 
his special attention ; nature will take care of this. 
But they can provide for the boy's needs by giv- 
ing him an opportunity for selection in a group 
large enough to include girls of different traits 
and interests. If the boy's needs be thus pro- 
vided for, it will save him from wandering about 
making promiscuous selection. 

Interest in the Opposite Sex. — The writer 
knows of a number of parents who are worrying 
because their boys and girls are not interested 
in the opposite sex, and they think this defect, as 
they regard it, must be due to some deficiency in 
the education of their children. It is probably 
nothing of the kind. Nature apparently arranges 
it so that there will be a certain proportion of 
boys and girls who have no active feelings with 
respect to the opposite sex — they are neutral in 
this respect. And if Nature has not implanted 
the feeling, it certainly can never be implanted 
by parents. The only thing parents can do is to 
work sub rosa to bring boys and girls together 
who may take a fancy to one another and let 
Nature do the rest. 

Interest in the Opposite Sex Cannot Be 
Forced. — It is always fruitless for parents to at- 



116 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

tempt to coerce their sons to take an interest in 
girls. No better method can be thought of to turn 
a boy against girls permanently than to talk to 
him about his duty to take an interest in them. 
A boy cannot be lectured to profitably about a 
matter of this kind. It is not a subject for dis- 
cussion at all, certainly not for criticism, even 
granting that it is desirable for all boys eighteen 
or nineteen years old and beyond to be interested 
in girls. It would be better anyway for most boys 
not to become much concerned about girls until 
they approach maturity. It is highly desirable 
that during the teens boys should be principally 
interested in accomplishing something worth 
while in science, in mechanics, in business or in 
some other serious occupation or enterprise. 

The Optimistic Age. — At what period in life 
does one attain the pinnacle in courage, cheer- 
fulness, faith, altruism and endurance? The girl 
reaches it between sixteen and twenty, and the 
boy between eighteen and twenty-three. This is 
the romantic and optimistic age. For the youth, 
boy or girl, whose enthusiasm and ideals have 
not been chilled by sophisticated, blase persons 
there is nothing sordid or commonplace or mean 
or unlovely in human life. 

There are those who say to boys and girls who 
have entered this period "You're in the silly age. 
You may get over it in time, though; you'll learn 
that most people are mean and despicable. You '11 



WHEN THE TENDER PASSION APPEARS 117 

see that those whom you now think so perfectly 
delightful are made of common clay and have 
nothing admirable about them." 

Anyone who seeks in this way to destroy the 
naivete, the confidence and the idealism of youth 
deserves to be shut away from human society. 
He has himself lost his ideals, probably through 
self-indulgence, and he is not fit to associate with 
those who still retain them. If one knew the life 
story of such persons he would undoubtedly see 
that at some point in their career, probably when 
they were in the romantic age, their higher feel- 
ings were debased by gratification of passions. 
Indulgence in animal appetite usually results in 
the debasement of the ideals that are acquired by 
every normal boy and girl in later youth. If 
restraint had been exercised, life would have con- 
tinued to be romantic and delightful instead of 
gross and sordid, as it is sure to become when the 
pursuit of sensuous pleasure turns the attention 
and energies away from idealistic endeavors. 

Romance and Chivalry in Later Youth. — One 
important concern of those who guide the steps 
of later youth should be to preserve romantic 
ideals. All students of the evolution of the 
human race know that these ideals have played 
the chief role in the development of civilization. 
Romance encourages restraint of animal pas- 
sion, and incites to high endeavor in the attain- 
ment of artistic and ethical values. Peoples 



118 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

whose youth have little or no romantic ideals 
occupy the lowest place intellectually, ethically 
and morally among the nations of the world. On 
the other hand, those whose lives are regulated 
largely by ideals which have their origin in 
youth have attained the highest rank in civiliza- 
tion. One can grade all the peoples of the world 
on the scale of civilization according to the de- 
gree to which they are devoted to the attainment 
of ideals, having their origin in youth, as con- 
trasted with mere physical gratification. 

At least three-fourths of all the controlling 
forces of human life have relation in some way 
or another to sex. In any individual life or in 
the life of a nation the matter of chief impor- 
tance is to keep these relations on a high roman- 
tic and idealistic plane. A normal, healthy- 
minded boy sees every girl a queen; if he can 
keep this view throughout life he will be con- 
stantly stimulated to be his best and do his best. 
The boy should have no experience and cer- 
tainly no teaching which would rob him of his 
belief that the girl possesses ideal qualities. 

What is true of the boy is equally true in 
principle of the girl. But she has a better 
chance in modern life to retain her romantic 
ideals than has the boy because he is exposed to 
the teachings of those who make money out of 
the indulgence of his lower impulses. These 
latter individuals seek in a variety of ways to 



WHEN THE TENDER PASSION APPEARS HO 

break down the boy's idealistic conceptions of 
the girl, because .then he will let himself run 
loose in the gratification of his passions, and 
those who fatten on the indulgences of men will 
profit thereby. Happily the girl is shielded from 
much of the suggestion and even the teaching 
which frequently deprives the boy of his fine 
idealistic feeling. We seem unable to elmininate 
the sordid influences that play upon the boy in 
many American communities to-day. 

Are Girls More Refined by Nature Than 
Boys? — This will be the best place to refer to 
the popular belief that boys are crude and rather 
vulgar by nature. This tradition has become 
established because girls, after the age of three 
or four at any rate, seem to be more refined 
than boys in speech, in manners and in dress. 
But the difference may not be a native one; it 
may be due to differences in training and espe- 
cially in environment and companionship. From 
the age of three or four on, boys are often — in 
fact usually — subjected to rough associations 
from which girls are protected. Boys are per- 
mitted to hear vulgar, obscene language which 
girls, speaking generally, never hear. Vulgar 
people try to restrain their vulgarity when a 
girl is present but they never think of doing 
so in a boy's presence. Even in public per- 
formances, as in the theater, obscenity will be 
indulged in if only men are in attendance, 



120 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

whereas little if anything of the kind would 
occur if girls or women were in attendance. 
Lewd actions are exhibited before boys and men, 
while girls are never admitted to such places. 
Public sentiment always requires that the en- 
vironment of the girl be more wholesome and 
refined than the environment of the boy. If 
girls are by nature more refined than boys they 
should not need this protection from vulgar and 
vicious suggestion. If boys are more suscepti- 
ble, why are they not safeguarded? Will some- 
one who is in the habit of ascribing native vul- 
garity to boys please answer this question? 

Well-meaning people are constantly seeking to 
improve the environment of girls so as to keep 
their thoughts, feelings and conduct wholesome 
and sweet and refined, but they let boys grow up 
under debasing conditions and then lament over 
the fact that they are not refined and scrupulous 
about their speech and their actions. Parents 
will expend from five to ten times as much 
money in securing nice clothes for a daughter as 
they will for a son, and then they wonder why he 
is not as particular as she is about his appear- 
ance. The girl always has the choicest room in 
the house, and the boy must take what is left 
after everyone else is provided for. The result 
of all this is, of course, that the boy as a rule is 
coarser in his thought, speech and action than 
the girl. But the difference may not be due to 



WHEN THE TENDER PASSION APPEARS 121 

heredity, it may be due to our custom of trying 
to keep the associations of the girl wholesome 
and inspiring, while permitting the boy to look 
out for himself, with the result that he is often 
Constantly subjected to vicious suggestion. The 
wonder is that, taking boys as they go, they are 
not worse than they are. 

Preparation for the Great Adventure. — The 
most momentous problem of the teens relates to 
preparation for marriage. In many foreign 
countries marriage is arranged on a business or 
on a political basis by the parents or relatives 
or political advisers of the persons directly con- 
cerned. When this is the case, the relations be- 
tween husband and wife are not much more inti- 
mate or enduring than are the relations between 
partners in a commercial or a political enter- 
prise. Often it is not expected that they will 
remain boon companions for a lifetime, and 
quite frequently they in time form more inti- 
mate connections with others than between them- 
selves. It is thought not to be worthy of remark 
when a husband has closer friendships with other 
women than he has with his wife, and the same 
is true respecting the wife's friendships with 
other men than her husband. In countries where 
marriage is looked upon in this way, it is not 
regarded of great importance that a boy or girl 
should make special preparation for the duties, 
responsibilities or opportunities of married life. 



122 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

But in this country we take a very different 
view of marriage. We do not intend or wish 
that any considerations but mutual irresistible 
attraction should enter into the marriage alli- 
ance between two persons. When marriage is 
thus the consummation of affection between the 
boy and the girl, it means that their influence 
upon each other will be much more vital and 
momentous than it would be if they had married 
merely for convenience. They will see a great 
deal more of one another than married people 
see of each other in most foreign countries. 
Their personalities will be a source of pleasure 
or of distress to one another in a much higher 
degree than is the case in other countries, and 
this makes marriage in our country a matter of 
supreme consequence to everyone who enters 
into it. If in certain foreign countries married 
people cease to be interested in each other, they 
are not required by law or custom to have much 
to do with one another. The husband does not 
feel obligation to provide for his wife's well- 
being and comfort and she is not expected to 
make his life agreeable. But with us a husband 
and wife must play the chief part in determin- 
ing the happiness or the misery of each other 
from the marriage altar to the grave. 

Fundamental Requirements. — One who will 
study the types of men and women who are 
brought into morals courts and who will listen 



WHEN THE TENDER PASSION APPEARS 123 

to their tales of distress and woe will appre- 
ciate that there are a few fundamental require- 
ments in order that the marriage of two per- 
sons may endure and may promote the well- 
being and happiness of both. First of all, a man 
and woman must continue to be personally 
agreeable and attractive to each other. They 
entered into the marriage relation in response 
to mutual attraction; and when this attraction 
ceases the bond which holds them together will 
be weakened or broken. When all romance 
passes out of the lives of married people they 
will inevitably tend to pull apart. Children in 
the family may hold them in the same home, but 
they cannot preserve the regard and affection 
and intimacy with each other which they had 
originally. 

It is not always the case, but it is usually so, 
that the women seen in morals courts have lost 
their attractiveness. Often indulgence of appe- 
tite has robbed them of comeliness of form or 
charm of features ; or it may be that overwork 
or poverty has taken the color out of their cheeks 
and the light out of their eyes. Whatever the 
cause of decline in personal appeal may be, the 
man who was once attracted by and devoted to 
the woman has lost his interest because romance 
is gone and he finds no other compensating 
qualities. There is neither poise nor gracious- 
ness of manner nor fineness of mind nor superi- 



124 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

ority of character to replace this decay in per- 
sonal attraction. The boy was captivated by 
purely external charms; and when those dis- 
appeared or their superficiality was detected 
there was nothing back of them to hold the man 
and so he began to pull away. He no longer felt 
an interest in contributing to the woman's wel- 
fare and comfort. If he could not get free and 
wander wherever he wished, he would express 
his growing indifference or positive dislike in a 
violent way. Almost any day in a morals court 
one can observe cases of this sort. 

The situation is about the same with respect to 
the defects and deficiencies of the husband. He 
won the girl because of his devotion, unselfish- 
ness and manliness. But having her securely in 
his possession, his devotion cools, his inherent 
selfishness is manifested, and he develops into a 
self-indulgent, coarse and animalistic creature. 
His attractive qualities were wholly on the sur- 
face and were exhibited merely for the purpose 
of capturing a mate, and when he had accom- 
plished his purpose there was nothing deeper in 
him which could continue to hold the affection 
and admiration of the girl who had over-esti- 
mated his qualities. His coarseness and selfish- 
ness repel her and she reaches the stage where 
she cannot endure him. His type can be fre- 
quently seen either in divorce courts or in morals 
courts. 



WHEN THE TENDER PASSION APPEARS 125 

It is not necessary tliat one should risit these 
unsavory courts in order to observe the traits 
and types which have been described. He can 
see them frequently in daily life among the mar- 
ried people whom he knows. The cases are not 
as extreme as those that find their way to the 
courts, but they are serious enough to cause 
more or less conflict between married people and 
to render their own lives and the lives of all 
connected with them unhappy. 

Good Comradeship Essential. — In order that 
the happiness of a boy and girl on their marriage 
day should be enduring they must continue to be 
good comrades with one another. Any training 
which will fit a boy and a girl to be lasting com- 
panions will be a good preparation for a happy 
married life. This means that they must acquire 
self-control, poise, cheerfulness and resourceful- 
ness. Two persons cannot remain comrades 
very long unless they both have intelligence and 
depth of character and richness of feeling. The 
minute we exhaust the intellectual or emotional 
resources of a companion we begin to lose our 
regard for him; he cannot continue to interest 
us unless he has possibilities of instructing or 
entertaining us or helping us to solve the prob- 
lems which confront us, or unless we continue to 
admire the way in which he carries himself as he 
goes through life meeting all kinds of situations. 
This matter is of first importance in relation 



126 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

to continued friendship between married people. 
The Better the Education the Happier the 
Married Life. — The better educated a boy and 
a girl are the better chance they stand of living 
a happy married life together; this principle is 
illustrated in divorce and moral courts every 
day. Some readers will be inclined to doubt that 
^he more one is educated the better companion 
he will make in married life. But this doubt 
arises from the fact that many persons think of 
education as consisting of learning in grammar 
and algebra and Latin and the like. But while 
knowledge of this sort may constitute a part of 
education, it is a very small part. Education in 
a true sense means an understanding of human 
nature primarily — how men have lived, what 
they have thought, what their ideals have been, 
how they have struggled to surmount the ob- 
stacles in their path, how the mind of man has 
discovered the secrets of nature, how he has util- 
ized the forces of nature to win subsistence and 
leisure for himself. All these matters are to- 
day taught in history and literature and art and 
music and every branch of science and engineering 
and household economics. The more knowledge of 
this character one has the greater poise he will 
have, the better he wiU understand the situations 
that arise in married life, the more interesting- 
he will be to his most intimate companion, and 
the better able he will be to interpret life as they 



WHEN THE TENDER PASSION APPEARS 127 

go along together. The less equipment lie has 
in knowledge of this kind, the poorer comrade 
he will make, the sooner his resources will be 
exhausted, and he will cease to be an inspira- 
tion or a comfort in his household. If one were 
setting out deliberately to prepare for marriage, 
then, he should first get as much real, vital knowl- 
edge relating to humanity and nature as he couldi 
acquire without neglecting other interests or doing 
violence to health. 

Health Is a Fundamental Requisite. — And 
speaking of health suggests that an essential re- 
quisite for enduring companionship in marriage 
is physical and mental health. A boy is never 
attracted by a girl because she is an invalid nor 
is the girl attracted by the boy for this reason. 
There is no romance in invalidism. When in- 
firmities of body or mind develop after marriage 
the bond of attraction will be broken in a great 
majority of cases. This will sound harsh to 
some readers; but again this is a biological law 
which must be taken account of in the marriage 
relation. It is not only that one who is physically 
or mentally incapacitated must cease to play a 
part as a resourceful and well-poised and sympa- 
thetic and cheerful companion; but the invalid 
or semi-invalid becomes a icharge upon the at- 
tention and energy of the mate. The invalid 
misinterprets what others do, becomes narrow- 
minded and self-centered and estimates every- 



128 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

thing from an egoistic and selfish standpoint. 
Irascibility takes the place of self-restraint and 
good nature and lasting intimate comradeship 
will be impossible under these conditions, even 
though complete dissolution of the marriage 
relation may be avoided for the sake of children 
or for social or business reasons. 

So every boy and girl in the grammar school, 
the continuation school and the high school 
should be required to study practical problems 
pertaining to the preservation of health. They 
should learn thoroughly how the various factors 
and experiences of every-day life influence 
bodily and mental poise, vigor and stability. A 
large proportion of boys and girls who contract 
marriage these days are densely ignorant on this 
subject, and they sutfer personally and in their 
marriage relations in consequence of their ignor- 
ance. Even if they should remain single they 
will need to understand how to do the work of 
life without waste of vitality and unnecessary 
wear and tear. 

Diet and Temper. — There is a special phase 
of the matter of health which is of particular 
importance in married life. This concerns the 
intimate connection between one's diet and his 
temper. Certain foods and methods of prepar- 
ing them tend to produce irascibility. Not infre- 
quently the beginnings of conflict in the newly- 
established household arise as soon as the re- 



WHEN THE TENDER PASSION APPEARS 129 

sponsibility falls upon the young wife to pur- 
chase and prepare food. She may know next 
to nothing about the foods that are best suited 
to her own needs and those of her husband; 
and such foods as she chooses she may prepare 
so that it is well-nigh impossible to secure the 
nourishment which they contain. To counteract 
the dissatisfaction which her food gives, she is 
apt to resort to stimulants like tea and coifee 
and condiments which for the moment mitigate 
the evil consequences of inappropriate food and 
bad cookery, but which in the end produce un- 
stable nervous conditions. 

One can see young people starting out in mar- 
ried life who are cultivating nasty tempers 
through the use of improper food and beverages. 
So it is within reason to say that a girl who sets 
up in housekeeping and depends upon luck in the 
choice and preparation of food stands a good 
chance of arriving at an unhappy end. Perhaps 
the time will come when we will make rules and 
regulations which will prevent a girl from as- 
suming the responsibilities of married life until 
she shall have learned the relation of tempera- 
ment to nutrition, and shall have acquired scien- 
tific knowledge relating to the choice and prep- 
aration of food to meet the requirements of her- 
self and her companion, and children when they 
arrive, in the special circumstances in which 
they are placed. We will not allow a teacher or 



130 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

a physician or a barber or a dentist or a plumber 
to practice until he has gained scientific knowl- 
edge relating to his special business, and why 
should we permit people to undertake the most 
complicated and important duties in life without 
any special study of the problems that will be 
encountered? 

Economic Strain and Stress. — On the man's 
side, there is, of course, the necessity of being 
prepared to provide the food for the household. 
It is an old story — this wrecking of households 
almost at the start because of economic strain 
and stress. A man is allowed to enter into mar- 
riage before he is capable of maintaining a house- 
hold. He can not do anything well which society 
wants to have done, and he takes a chance of 
being able to earn an occasional dollar. When 
he had no one but himself to provide for he 
might well take the chance, but it is disastrous 
when he has another who is dependent upon him. 
The moral is that if we could do so we should 
prevent any man from contracting marriage who 
had not fitted himself to do some work up to 
such a standard that he would be reasonably 
sure of his services being in demand. No matter 
what preparation may be made in other ways 
to meet the responsibilities of marriage, if a 
man is unable to earn a decent livelihood for his 
wife and himself and children his household will 
go to pieces sooner or later; or if it hangs to- 



WHEN THE TENDER PASSION APPEARS 131 

gether for appearance's sake it will at least be 
extremely unhappy. 

No matter how confidently and idealistically 
two persons may start out in married life, it is 
certain that problems of adjusting outlay to in- 
come will very soon arise and it will be neces- 
sary to solve them satisfactorily if misunder- 
standing and strain and stress are to be avoided. 
In present-day American life there are so many 
temptations to expend one's resources that it 
must be very definitely understood how far the 
wife and the husband may safely go in their ex- 
penditures for various purposes. This means 
that at the start they must work out a program 
of expenses based upon income; that is to say, 
they must plan their expenditures according to 
a budget. It is very doubtful if two persons can 
start out in life and not come to grief sooner or 
later unless they adopt something like a budget 
system. But those who until their marriage day 
have gone on the hit-and-miss plan, have ex- 
tracted what they could from parents or others 
and expended it without much consideration of 
their total needs, will have difficulty in confining 
their expenditures to budget allowances. They 
should have experience in budget planning long- 
before they arrive at the marriage day. Every 
boy and girl in the teens should learn to expend 
according to a budget. Boys and girls who have 
been trained in this way before their marriage 



132 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

will save themselves much trouble and conflict 
and distress after marriage. 

Apart from its value in preparation for mar- 
riage, it affords excellent discipline for young 
persons to leam that they must adjust their 
outgo in any particular direction to the amount 
which is provided to meet this outlay, and under 
no circumstances can they go beyond it. Their 
anticipations and desires must be regulated in 
view of this. Those who do not leam this les- 
son before they enter into marriage loam it with 
great difficulty afterward and some of them 
never leam it; and in such cases from the start 
to the finish of married life there is dissatisfac- 
tion and strain and stress and continual effort to 
secure more for this or for that purpose than 
the income of the household will allow or than 
the one who provides the funds is willing to 
allow. 

When a household is not run on a budget plan, 
the breadwinner is very apt to assume a nega- 
tive attitude toward all requests for money. He 
feels that he must always be on the defensive, 
and he makes life unbearable for everyone in the 
household. What he should do for the peace of 
mind of himself and of his wife and children is 
to determine in what ways his income can be 
expended to greatest advantage, and then he 
should regularly set aside the sums agreed upon 
for each purpose, and he should permit his wife 



WHEN THE TENDER PASSION APPEARS 133 

to expend the sums relating to the maintenance 
of the household without begging him for money. 
There can never be peace and good-will and 
happiness in a household when the wife has to 
play the role of beggar and never knows what 
she can depend upon to meet the operating ex- 
penses of the family. There is no business of 
any kind that could be conducted successfully or 
comfortably on such a plan. 

Mutual Understanding and Appreciation. — 
One potent cause of misunderstanding and dis- 
harmony in newly-established homes is that hus- 
band and wife do not have an appreciation of 
the duties and responsibilities which each has 
to assume. A boy in the typical American home 
receives little or no training which prepares him 
to understand the detailed responsibilities in- 
volved in homemaking. During childhood and 
youth his needs are attended to often without 
his knowing who attends to them. He gains no 
adequate conception of the care, thoughtfulness 
and industry which are required to make life 
comfortable for him. The typical American boy 
treats the people in his home who look after his 
welfare as though their tasks were simple and 
require little thought or sacrifice. He often car- 
ries this view with him when he establishes his 
own home, and instead of being sympathetic and 
helpful toward the one who is trying to make the 
home attractive, he is critical and fault-finding 



134 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

and so lie adds to instead of lightens her burdens. 
On the other hand, the typical American girl 
does not appreciate what is required in order to 
supply her wants. The money comes from 
somewhere, but she does not see anyone who is 
struggling day in and day out to earn it. So 
far as she knows, it drops from heaven ; and then 
when she goes into a home of her own, she can- 
not understand why funds are not supplied as 
she needs them and why when the man comes in 
at night he should not assume the duties of the 
household because he has been out enjoying him- 
self all day. The majority of women do not ap- 
preciate that it requires incessant strain and 
stress and struggle to win bread for the house- 
hold. This misunderstanding on both sides could 
be largely avoided if boys were made acquainted 
with some of the detailed problems, responsibili- 
ties and cares of one who manages a household, 
and if a girl were made acquainted with the com- 
bat and struggle and endeavor which every man 
must undergo incessantly in modern American 
life if he makes a decent living for those who are 
dependent upon him. Eveiy boy and girl should 
have an introduction to these problems in the 
continuation school, high school or college, but 
they must carry on their studies after they have 
entered into the marriage relation. In no other 
way can mutual understanding and helpfulness 
be secured. 



WHEN THE TENDER PASSION APPEARS 135 

Talk About Duties and Burdens Can he Over- 
done. — It is possible, of course, to put too much 
stress on talk relating to the responsibilities, 
duties and burdens of the homemaker and the 
breadwinner. Frequently in homes, especially in 
the country, the principal topic of conversation 
is drudgery. The woman and the man both 
think of nothing and talk of nothing but how 
hard they work and how little joy they get in 
life. They aim to make martyrs of themselves, 
and they take the joy out of life. One cannot 
be comfortable in the company of a person who 
is incessantly complaining of his hard lot and 
seeking to awaken sympathy for himself. When 
the atmosphere of a home is colored by the ever- 
present thought and talk of work and struggle 
and drudgery, there can be but little good-will 
or harmony between husband and wife. A 
woman cannot continue to take delight in the 
comradeship of a man just because he is a hard 
worker, and it is equally true the other way 
'round. Young people starting out in married 
life should be made to realize that each must do 
his work whatever it may be without burdening 
the other with it and fearing that he will not be 
appreciated unless he incessantly complains of 
how much he has to do. The home fireside should 
be a place of relaxation and good cheer, and nar- 
ration of the struggles of the day should be 
taboo. 



136 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

The Treatment of Children a Source of Con- 
flict. — The chief cause of conflict in nine out of 
ten homes concerns the treatment of children. 
Often mothers think the fathers of their children 
are too harsh or too lenient with them or set them 
bad examples in one way or another. Just as 
frequently fathers think that the mothers do not 
train them wisely. When children reach the teens 
one parent often ascribes their shortcomings to 
the mistakes of the other parent, and when this 
is the case there can be no peace or harmony or 
good-will in a household. It not only entails un- 
happiness for the parents, but more serious still 
it results inevitably that unwholesome influences 
will play upon the young. 

When parents have nothing but their intuition 
to guide them in dealing with their children they 
are almost certain to differ in their views of the 
proper course to be follow^ed in general as well 
as in specific situations. One parent may think 
a child should never be whipped, while the other 
may take a directly contrary view. The judg- 
ment of both is based on instinct and tempera- 
mental peculiarities. Neither has any under- 
standing of the nature of childhood or youth 
and the effects of different methods of training 
upon the intellect and character of the young. It 
would be possible to avoid much of the strain 
and stress which one sees in many households if 
the parents had made a study of child nature and 



WHEN THE TENDER PASSION APPEARS 137 

means and methods of training in tlie home. If 
a man had gained a little accurate knowledge re- 
garding the normal impulses of childhood he 
would not think that the mischievous tendencies 
of his children were due to wrong training by 
the mother. Instead of criticising the mother or 
being impatient with the children, he would 
strive to provide facilities for the latter to em- 
ploy their energies in legitimate ways. 

Training in Continuation Schools. — In most of 
the states continuation schools are being estab- 
lished for pupils who com.plete the elementary 
school but who cannot go through a high school. 
Boys and girls are required to maintain connec- 
tion with schools until they are sixteen and in some 
cases until they are eighteen. The time will come 
when every boy and girl will have in a continua- 
tion school or a high school or a college some in- 
struction relating to the natural traits of childhood 
and youth and means and methods of dealing with 
them under the conditions of contemporary life. 
Children make as interesting and important ob- 
jects for study as plants or animals or rocks or 
stars or cube-root or algebra or spelling or gram- 
mar. In the schools we can introduce boys and 
girls to the problems of child-life and child-train- 
ing and then we must continue their education 
after they have assumed the duties of parent- 
hood. Mrs. Cora Wilson Stewart in Kentucky 
has shown that it is feasible to keep all the peo- 



138 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

pie in school, even elderly people, if we will teach 
them what they need to know at the time. 

Special histruction Relating to Married Life. 
— Finally, a word should be said regarding in- 
struction pertaining directly and especially to 
the special problems of married life. One hears 
it said to-day that a mother should instruct her 
daughter and a father his son regarding the mys- 
teries of life. There is a widespread belief that 
without such instruction a boy and a girl cannot 
understand themselves and cannot wisely meet 
the changes in sex-feeling that occur during the 
teens. But one rarely hears it said that a young 
man and a young woman should receive instruc- 
tion regarding the nature and desires of each 
other. Suggested talks and even courses of in- 
struction on sex-hygiene rarely if ever include 
anything that would enable the young man and 
the young woman to understand each other's 
feelings and point of view regarding the intimate 
experiences of life. The knowledge a young man 
picks up on the street or even at his club usually 
gives an erroneous notion regarding the girl's 
acquaintance with and attitude toward sex rela- 
tions. The burlesque and gaiety theatre and even 
the vaudeville pervert the typical man's mind re- 
garding the girl's sophistication in respect to 
these matters, so that he treats his girl friends as 
though they were initiated into the mysteries of 
sex-life, and this is unquestionably the cause of 



WHEN THE TENDER PASSION APPEARS 130 

much of the unhappiness arising from the attempt 
of young men and young women to adjust their 
conduct in harmony with one another's experi- 
ence and wishes. 

Why should not the mother tell her son what 
the girl who is to be his wife knows about the new 
experiences that await her and what are her 
ideals and feelings in respect to sex relations? 
Why does a mother not try to develop in her son 
a sensitiveness toward and regard for his bride's 
views and wishes ? Why does she not endeavor to 
counteract the corrupting influences of the sordid 
information which the young man who is familiar 
with the ways of the world cannot help but learn 
from one source or another? Why does a mother 
who remembers her own experiences let her son 
go on into marriage and not try to save him 
from the consequences of misinformation which 
the worldly-educated person is apt to acquire? 

There is advice which the father, too, could give 
his daughter. He knows the nature and views of 
the young man, and what the world has taught 
him that has given him a wrong conception of 
the girl. If the girl came to the new relations of 
married life forewarned, she would be the better 
able to meet the new situations without crises and 
especially without the destruction of the ideals 
which must be retained if life is to preserve any 
of its earlier sweetness and joy. Young men and 
young women are entitled to receive advice from 



140 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

parents or teachers which will enable them to un- 
derstand and appreciate one another in the most 
intimate relations of life. 



CHAPTER V 
DISTRACTIONS IN AMERICAN LIFE 

The High Cost of Simplicity in Education. — 
It would be an instructive experience for any per- 
son who is interested in education during the 
teens to spend a few days in a large public school 
anywhere in this country, and then pay a visit to 
Groton, Saint Mark's, Saint Paul's, Phillips An- 
dover, or any of the schools of which these are 
types. He would find that a boy cannot enter the 
latter schools unless his parents are able to pay 
a large fee. If he should examine the roster of 
pupils he would note that many of the families 
of great wealth, from Boston to San Francisco, 
are represented by pupils in one or another of 
these schools. The visitor would expect in the 
circumstances that the boys in these schools 
would live a luxurious and indolent life, sur- 
rounded with rich furniture, and provided with 
all the requisites for comfort and bodily pleas- 
ure. But the situation is quite different. The 
boys in these preparatory schools are dressed 
more plainly and simply than are the boys in the 
public high schools in almost any section of the 

141 



142 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

country. In some of the schools, as in Saint 
Paul's and Groton, boys are not permitted to 
wear expensive clothing, and at least the younger 
boys are limited to one suit for Sunday and a 
plain suit for week days. But in the public high 
schools, where there is competition for social 
superiority, one may find boys who affect extremes 
of dress and fashion, even when they come from 
homes with limited means. 

The public school has not yet been able to solve 
the problem of protecting its students from the 
fashions and distractions of outside life. There 
are probably very few high-school faculties in 
the country which would not, if they could, pre- 
serve simplicity in dress as well as in the man- 
ner of living among their pupils; but the seduc- 
tions of the world make such a strong appeal to 
pupils that the ideals of simple living, with ap- 
plication to intellectual work, can hardly be main- 
tained. In some of the public high schools, the 
boys, as well as the girls, early split into cliques 
on the basis of dress ; but such a thing is impos- 
sible in Groton or Saint Paul's or any of the 
other schools of this kind. These schools have 
succeeded in preserving a period in a boy's life 
in which the artificial claims to social superiority 
are held in check. The boy who gets ahead in one 
of these schools, speaking generally, is the clev- 
erest boy, the best scholar, the best athlete, the 
one who will play fairest and who is a leader. 



DISTRACTIONS IN AMERICAN LIFE 143 

That is to say, the real genuine qualities get a 
chance to flourish when attention is not dis- 
tracted by the social activities and ambitions of 
the world. 

The boys in the Saint Paul's and Saint Mark's 
type of school are required to live the simple life 
not only in the matter of dress, but in every other 
way. In the lower forms, a number of boys sleep 
in the same room. Each has a small cubicle to 
himself. This is furnished in the greatest sim- 
plicity — a cot, one picture, a small rug, a chair, 
a shelf or two for toilet articles, and a couple of 
hooks for the suit that is not being wora. But 
go into the sleeping room of the typical public 
high-school boy, and note the comparative luxury 
of furnishing and the extreme and eccentric 
decoration. The parents of this high-school boy 
could not "bear" to have him live in such Spar- 
tan simplicity as is required of the Hotchkiss or 
Saint Mark's or Saint Paul's boy. If one will 
ask the parents why it is necessary that their 
boy should be surrounded with so many things, 
all of which are more or less distracting from 
intellectual and physical pursuits, he will be told 
that boys ought to have comforts, and ought to 
have an opportunity to enjoy themselves accord- 
ing to their desires. Further, a mother who 
hasn't wealth would often not like to acknowledge 
to her neighbors that there were only the bare 
necessities in her boy's room. The parent imagines 



144 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

that it helps the family to climb up the social lad- 
der, or to hang on to the position which has been 
gained, if there is a superabundance of articles in 
every corner of the house. Many people think 
that simplicity indicates poverty and social in- 
feriority. 

Distraction /row Intellectual Tasks. — This 
matter might not be of particular importance if 
it were not that there is a struggle going on in 
high schools in this country to preserve an in- 
terest on the part of pupils in the things that are 
really of consequence. The world invites pupils 
to spend their time in parties and dancing and 
social dissipation. As a consequence, Latin, 
geometry, history and similar studies lose their 
hold upon pupils. A boy who is not strongly 
appealed to in other ways would be likely to take 
an interest in the subjects taught in a modern 
high school. Ordinarily they are presented in a 
concrete and attractive manner. Allowing for 
exceptions, teachers are studying ways and means 
to make what they teach concrete, vital, and even 
entertaining in some instances ; but even so, it is 
becoming increasingly difficult to hold the atten- 
tion of pupils and induce them to apply them- 
selves enthusiastically and continuously to their 
tasks. 

The writer has heard many parents express 
regret that their boys do not take the interest in 
their school work which they did themselves* 



DISTRACTIONS IN AMERICAN LIFE 145 

Such parents are often inclined to criticise the 
school for the pupil's indifference or even hos- 
tility to his studies. But the real fault lies in the 
inability of the typical home or typical com- 
munity to preserve simple interests on the part 
of the young. When a boy spends a night or two 
a week at a moving picture theatre and at least 
one night a week at a dance; when he passes a 
couple of hours a day in an automobile and even 
goes to his school in one; when he hears people 
talking everlastingly about clothes and entertain- 
ment; when he is always either planning to at- 
tend a party in some one else's house or to give 
one in his ow^n home — under such conditions it is 
practically impossible for any school to arouse 
the boy's enthusiasm for and hold his continued 
attention to his intellectual tasks. 

So the boy of wealth in the school conducted in 
the spirit of simplicity has an advantage over the 
boy who is incessantly appealed to by the mere- 
tricious values of the world — meretricious so far 
as he is concerned. He is over-stimulated by all 
these activities that are the outgrowth of adults 
seeking to secure stimulation and physical ex- 
hilaration and pleasure. Nature never intended 
that a youth should come under such influences; 
but American life is so organized that young 
people take up these adult activities and carry 
them to the limit. Any one who sees much of 
boys in a college or university knows that some 



146 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

of them are blase when they enter the freshman 
class. The older the community in which the col- 
lege is located the larger the proportion of such 
students. They have gone the pace in the high 
school. They have experienced all the stimula- 
tion of all the devices developed in modern 
American life to excite and indulge passion. 

The solution of the problem lies in the direc- 
tion of community cooperation in maintaining 
simplicity during the period of youth. The com- 
munity should join with the school to make the 
things for which the school stands supreme in the 
life of young people. The school cannot do it 
alone, for the reason that it does not have the in- 
dividual for longer than five or at the most six 
hours a day. For the rest of his waking life, the 
home and the street have him and make their im- 
press upon him. The home and the school should 
unite their forces to keep the life of the youth 
simple, so that he may develop his body through 
wholesome games and plays, not in the dance hall 
or the theatre, but on the playground, away from 
the institutions that excite and overstimulate 
him; and so that he may develop his mind by 
application to the studies that sum up the wis- 
dom of the race in regard to the art of living. 

Touth and the Moving Picture Theatre. — A 
particular word should be said regarding the in- 
fluence of moving pictures upon youth. Why do 
the ''movies" make such a strong appeal to 



DISTRACTIONS IN AMERICAN LIFE 147 

youth? Mainly because they indulge the passion 
for stirring, exciting, daring, hazardous adven- 
ture, and also because they frequently minister 
to the love of the comic which is strong in every 
normal individual. Further, they often fascinate 
youth through presenting scenes that are grue- 
some and fearful. Last but not least, they usually 
portray situations involving sex relations and the 
complications and struggles and tragedies that 
arise out of them. 

The moving pictures give an opportunity to 
indulge these elemental interests and passions 
by proxy, as it were. One can observe a love- 
making scene on the screen and in a way he can 
project himself into it and live in it, much as 
though he were himself the chief actor. He can 
observe deeds of heroism, as the saving of a 
life, or the killing of a lion, or the whipping of 
a bully, and for the time being the observer is 
the hero; he has something of the same pleasure 
that he would have if he were the real hero. And 
so with every stirring scene he observes ; he lives 
in it and so enjoys it. This is particularly true 
of children who have not developed the power of 
inhibition to a high degree, and whose impulses 
are constantly surging up and demanding grati- 
fication. The boy is entranced when he can with- 
draw from the conventional life about him and 
live in these adventurous, romantic, heroic, comic, 
and amorous scenes. For the time being he is 



148 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

a bona fide participator in these dramas. He 
does not consider at the moment that it is all 
make-believe, and that he is simply an on-looker. 
He is right in the midst of things. When there 
is bloody work going on he is not sitting back at 
a safe distance and watching the scene. He hears 
the groans of the victim, and he experiences 
active and positive feelings toward the murderer. 
Tears flow down his cheeks in compassion for the 
unfortunate, and he rejoices with the hero and 
heroine as though they were performing before 
him in the flesh. 

Those who produce moving pictures are keen 
students of primitive impulses and interests in 
childhood and youth, and even in mature life. 
They know very well that the scenes that will 
make the strongest appeal to young or old, but 
especially to the young, must be built around one 
or another of the elemental passions. That is 
to say, their scenes must deal with struggle, with 
the taking of life, with love; and for older per- 
sons, they must play on the complications of 
marriage, and ways and means of avoiding its 
obligations and its restrictions. The moving pic- 
ture exhibitors know they can bring crowds into 
their theatres if they will display scenes which 
the law would not tolerate on the street or in the 
schoolroom or in the church, and which parents 
never would tolerate in the house. 

If one goes into a school he will see that every- 



DISTRACTIONS IN AMERICAN LIFE 149 

thing is planned so as to to help the child to sub- 
due his animal instincts and interests, and to de- 
velop his self-restraint. The teacher tries to 
shut out all suggestions or appeals which will 
arouse primitive passion or desire. No parent 
or teacher would tolerate scenes in the school- 
room in which men murdered one another be- 
cause of amorous complications. If a teacher 
displayed scenes which suggested ledwness or 
vulgarity of any kind he would be instantly dis- 
missed. It would be still worse if such things 
were exhibited in the church. The law prohibits 
such displays on the street. And why? Because 
society realizes that if the low and vulgar and 
sensual and vicious are displayed in public they 
will be emulated by some of those who view 
them. 

Censorship of Pictures for the Young. — When 
it is suggested that there should be public control 
of the scenes which are presented in moving pic- 
ture shows one can hear men say: '^Let the in- 
dividual do w^hatever he chooses. It is his con- 
cern alone whether or not he should witness lewd 
or any other kind of situations. It is not the 
business of the community to supervise the be- 
havior of individuals. In a free country let a 
man act in a free way." Again one hears it said 
frequently that "No man is the keeper of his 
brother's morals, or of the morals of his 
])rother's children. If one does not like degraded 



150 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

scenes himself he may stay away from the 
'movies' and keep his children away, but he has 
no right to tell another man what he shall do, or 
what he shall permit his children to do." Those 
who use such arguments do not have confidence 
in them when applied in a universal way. They 
would not permit a house of vice to flourish in 
their neighborhood in order that a neighbor 
might indulge his impulses. They would not 
tolerate obscenity publicly displayed because 
they would not wish their children to be affected 
by it. In many ways they would control the acts 
of indecent or immoral persons so that their 
faults might not be spread among the innocent. 
It was once maintained that no one had a right 
to quarantine a man who had smallpox or scarlet 
fever or the like, but such an argument would 
to-day seem ridiculous. We do not allow a man 
to set up a roulette table on the theory that peo- 
ple who wish to patronize him can do so, while 
others who do not wish to play with chance can 
stay aw^ay. Should we let men operate a lottery 
on the principle that those who do not wish to try 
their fortunes with him should have nothing to 
say about it, — it is none of their business ? 

For its own protection society should prohibit 
the display of scenes in public places which would 
not be tolerated on the street or in the school or 
the church or the home. In no decent place out- 
side of the theatre are the young permitted to 



DISTRACTIONS IN AMERICAN LIFE 151 

observe debauchery and doings in tlie underworld, 
with attendant vicious conduct in gambling, shoot- 
ing, and the like. A father would not want his 
child to see in the home or the school criminal 
actions such as robbery and picking pockets and 
burning buildings; why should he permit these 
deeds to be displayed in public anywhere when it 
is certain that from fifty to seventy-five per cent, 
of those who view them will be children who may 
be easily influenced by them? Most unfortunate 
of all, and most disastrous to the moral life of 
the individual and of society, is the witnessing of 
scenes which minimize the importance of family 
ties, and which exalt vicious conduct tending to 
destroy the marriage relation. The moving pic- 
ture shows in many places are built up largely on 
scenes which belittle the sanctity of marriage, and 
which show ways and means of deception in the 
marriage relation. 

The Value of Moving Pictures. — There is an- 
other side to this matter. While moving pictures 
can make so strong an appeal to what is primitive 
and degenerate in human nature, they can make 
an equally strong appeal to what is exalted, cour- 
ageous, heroic, and chivalric. This is precisely 
what is being done in some places. The time may 
come when the great stories that have lived 
throughout the ages will be reproduced in moving- 
pictures. Every great book should, if possible, be 
dramatized, and presented so that the young, and 



152 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

the old as well, can gain its lessons throngh the 
eye; it will then make a deeper impression and 
endure longer than when gained simply through 
words, whether read or heard. Again, the richest 
humor and the finest comedy that have been pro- 
duced in the race can be and should be presented 
in moving pictures. The love of humor and com- 
edy can thus be gratified in a wholesome way, 
and not left to be nourished on what is crude and 
coarse and vulgar. 

There is in the world enough that will delight 
and captivate the young without debasing them, — 
enough of adventure and romance and heroism 
and comedy ; and the parent, the teacher, the min- 
ister and every other person who has the interest 
of the young and society at heart should insist 
upon having scenes of wholesome, decent life in 
the moving picture shows. That which is brutal 
and lewd should be rigorously suppressed. 

Team Work Between Home and School. — The 
chief problem of American youth is to acquire 
habits of application to serious elevating tasks. 
A pupil would not be liberally educated to-day un- 
less he could acquire more knowledge than his 
grandfather or grandmother did. The next gen- 
eration will need to learn more than the present 
one because knowledge is constantly increasing. 
So a child to-day should be more studious than his 
grandfather in order that he may master what is 
essential for a liberal education. The standards 



DISTRACTIONS IN AMERICAN LIFE 153 

of admission to liigli schools are higher now than 
they were fifty years ago. Indeed, the present- 
day public high school is doing as advanced work 
as the college did fifty years ago. This is exactly 
as it should be, because in no other way can the 
schools keep abreast of accumulating knowledge. 

Some of the once vigorous nations are decay- 
ing, partly because the people have lost the power 
of long-continued concentration on intellectual 
problems. They cannot even conserve what was 
achieved by their ancestors, not to speak of add- 
ing anything thereto. The moment this happens 
in any nation, the nation is doomed. When the 
majority of the young people in a community be- 
gin to devote all their out-of-school hours to idle- 
ness or distracting activities, then the community 
will cease to progress, and sooner or later it will 
turn back in its path. There are many commu- 
nities in the Old World and some in our own 
country that illustrate this principle. 

Young People Should Study at Home. — So the 
home must cooperate with the school in develop- 
ing habits of application to study. This can be 
accomplished only when the home is arranged 
with a view to having the children read or study 
during a part of every evening. The parents in a 
community should agree to have all the children 
in their homes devote themselves to their books or 
their music or something worth while in an intel- 
lectual way during certain hours of the evening. 



154 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

Parents can help their children to apply them- 
selves to their work by providing a study desk 
for each child. The arrangement of light is an 
important matter in encouraging concentration. 
The child's book or work should be illuminated, 
but the region beyond should be shaded. This 
tends to rivet the attention to the task in hand. 
Preliminary investigations have shown that most 
persons cannot concentrate as well in a dispersed 
light coming from some part of the room, usually 
the ceiling, as they can when the light is thrown 
directly upon the work. A desk lamp so shaded 
as to concentrate the light upon the book and to 
keep it out of the eyes is most favorable for the 
cultivation of habits of application. 

It is not necessary that each child in a home 
should have a study room for himself alone. In- 
deed, it is better that the children and the parents 
should be in the same room provided all are en- 
gaged in intellectual tasks. Investigations recent- 
ly made have shown that the majority of persons 
can study better in a group than when they are 
alone. In colleges many of the students cannot 
apply themselves to their tasks in their own 
rooms, but when they go to the library and are 
surrounded by others engaged in study they are 
helped to concentrate upon their work. 

The best arrangement would be to have in 
every home a room set aside as a study-room or 
library. There should be a special place reserved 



DISTRACTIONS IN AMERICAN LIFE 155 

in this room for each child and for the father and 
the mother. When it comes seven o'clock in the 
evening, or whatever hour is agreed upon, each 
person should be in his place. \ They should all be 
at work, and then no one will have a tendency to 
shirk or yield to distraction. Habits of industry 
are as contagious as habits of idleness and dis- 
sipation. It is practically impossible for a parent 
to develop studious habits in his children when 
all the other children in the community are out on 
the street. But it is usually not at all impossible 
to accomplish this when all the other children are 
applying themselves to their tasks. 

The Telephone Is a Distractive Factor. — One 
factor which interferes with the development of 
rigorous mental habits in modern life is the tele- 
phone. In many homes it prevents any continuous 
periods of study. A child may be just getting his 
attention upon his work and shutting out distrac- 
tions when he is called to the telephone, and it 
may be some time before he can apply himself to 
his task again. If this happens two or three 
times during an evening it will tend to develop a 
habit of mind which will make it difficult for 
him to concentrate upon any intellectual task. 

A program should be worked out in every home 
so that there will be certain hours in the evening 
when a child who is studying cannot be called to 
the telephone or any other place. He should early 
be made to realize that when he is engaged in his 



156 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

work nothing should be allowed to interfere until 
his task is finished. If he does not acquire the 
habit of application for long uninterrupted peri- 
ods, he will be in endless trouble, and he will 
neither be happy or contented himself nor will he 
give pleasure to others. The happiest young peo- 
ple whom one meets in high school or college are 
those who have acquired habits of concentration 
which enable them to do their work up to stand- 
ard, and so to gain the approval and good will 
of their instructors and their classmates. The 
most unhappy individual is the one who every day 
incurs the censure of his instructors and the 
ridicule of his fellows. 

Many parents think it is a hardship for chil- 
dren to be required to develop these studious 
habits in the home ; but the hardship will be great- 
er for anyone who does not acquire them. This 
does not mean that a child should not have sev- 
eral hours of freedom every day in which he may 
do what he pleases. But he must have some time 
when he will give himself without interruption 
to intellectual tasks. 

Parents Often Encourage Distraction. — ^A word 
should be said in this connection about the tend- 
ency of many parents to worry about their chil- 
dren 'improving" themselves. They think it is 
educative for children to attend concerts, moving 
picture shows, entertainments for the benefit of 
charitable institutions, take part in dramatics, 



DISTRACTIONS IN AMERICAN LIFE 157 

and the like. Every day one hears parents and 
teachers debating the question whether it would 
be better for their children to attend a trained 
animal show at the Orpheum, say, or to devote 
the time that would thus be spent to study at 
home. There are so many forms of entertain- 
ment and general instruction now in almost every 
town and city that children might devote all their 
afternoons and evenings to something which many 
persons think would be improving for them. 

But there is danger in this. The knowledge 
that will be of most sei'vice in adult life has been 
gathered into the various subjects of study. With- 
out arithmetic, say, the development of the race 
would have been impossible, and any individual 
who does not master arithmetic will be handi- 
capped in his life. Exactly the same principle is 
true of practically every subject taught in the 
elementary schools. No one can seriously ques- 
tion the statement that most of what is found to- 
day in any progressive school is essential in order 
that one may be able to handle himself properly 
and effectively when he enters real life. But this 
knowledge is not as exciting, is not as full of 
fire, does not appeal to the emotions so strongly 
as does the sort of thing that may be seen in the 
moving picture show, or heard at the concert, or 
that may be experienced in taking part in a play. 

One may observe children who have become 
greatly interested in these latter activities lose 



158 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

their power of application to tlie work of the 
school. College students who become absorbed 
in dramatics or who acquire the habit of going to 
the theatre, or are over-fond of the dance, or who 
cannot resist the temptation to be visiting some- 
body much of the time, are likely to fail in their 
intellectual tasks. When such a student tries to 
apply himself to a serious piece of work he be- 
comes restless. The pull of the world outside is 
strong upon him, and it usually is a matter of 
only a short time until he will yield to it. 

Shall children not take advantage of these 
*' improving" activities then? Only very spar- 
ingly. A mother who urges her boy when he has 
settled down of an evening for study or reading to 
go to the theatre with her because there is a play 
on that she thinks may give him some ''knowledge 
of life" is making a mistake. Even if the play 
would instruct him, which is doubtful, still he 
ought to acquire the habit of application to his 
intellectual tasks at home. There will be distrac- 
tions enough anyway no matter how much we may 
do to protect our children from them, and a 
parent or teacher ought only very rarely to sug- 
gest to his children that they should go to this 
or that or the other thing which is unrelated to 
their school work. 

The chief requirement of the child is to master 
this systematized knowledge which has slowly ac- 
cumulated throughout the development of the 



DISTRACTIONS IN AMERICAN LIFE 159 

race, and which is the result of all the experi- 
ments of our ancestors in their efforts to solve 
the problems of life. Unless the child is well 
grounded in all this knowledge, the ''improving" 
things Avill not do him much good. 

The Tonic Effect of Mastery. — This will be the 
best place to impress the fact that the mastery of 
intellectual tasks is a tonic to a flabby character. 
Every large school contains records of pupils who 
at one time did poor work in school, and were 
starting on a life of loafing and dissipation, but 
who straightened up and did excellent work later 
on. What was the cause of such a change? In a 
large proportion of cases these pupils who were 
drifting along came in time upon a subject which 
appealed to them and they mastered it, and the 
consciousness of mastery acted as a sort of tonic 
to their whole mental and moral life. Here is a 
typical concrete example: 

H. J. is now sixteen years of age. Up until 
last year he was at the bottom of his class and 
he was known as a loafer. He did just enough 
work to pull through each year. Formerly he 
had been taught entirely by women teachers, but 
last year he had two strong men for instructors. 
Although they treated him rather severely for 
what they thought was lack of application to his 
studies, he still regarded them highly. The in- 
fluence of these two instructors began soon to 
tell on the boy. Before the year closed he had 



160 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

earned a rank of "Excellent" in two studies. The 
discovery that he could do any work which would 
entitle him to receive an ''Excellent" changed his 
attitude toward all his work and improved his 
conduct. This year he is excellent in all his 
studies. He acts like a boy who had suddenly 
found out that he could jump over a fence twice 
as high as he thought he could. Such a boy after 
his discovery of his ability would not be content 
with jumping over low fences; he would insist 
upon going as high as possible. So with H. J. 
now; he would be ashamed to do work entitling 
him to a rank of ''Poor" only. He realizes that 
he is capable of doing high-grade work, and he 
feels an inspiration in the doing of it. He would 
feel the same now in being at the foot of the 
class as he would in running a race and coming in 
last when he could easily be first. 

Nature equips every individual normally with 
an impulse to do his best in any field of endeavor. 
But many pupils never find out what their best is 
in intellectual work. They go along at a slow 
pace because they do not come in contact with 
persons who arouse them so they make use of all 
their powers. The best thing that could happen 
to any pupil of ability who is lagging behind 
would be to have an experience which would con- 
vince him that he could do work up to the highest 
standard in his school. The sense of being at the 
top of a class and of being master of a situation 




All boys should have oppoitiuiity for "stunts" in a gymnasium. 




A normal boy likes to work \\ith tools. Coys who have adequate 

facilities to make piactical things as these boys are doing 

are not likely to become enamored with the street. 



DISTRACTIONS IN AMERICAN LIFE 161 

would quicken bis whole life. Not only would it 
enable bira to accomplisb more and better work, 
but the very fact tbat be discovered tbat be could 
acbieve tasks on a bigb plane would be a source 
of infinite satisfaction and inspiration to bim. 
Sucb a boy would get mucli more out of life and 
be bappier tban be would be if be sbould continue 
to go along witbout exerting bimself to tbe limit 
of bis capacity. 

Wben a pupil is able to say, — ''I can do tbis 
work up to tbe bigbest standard, and therefore I 
will do it," bis life thereafter will be in every 
way of more worth to himself and to others than 
it would be if be should say, — '*I cannot do any- 
thing but poor work, and therefore I will not try 
to do any better." This latter attitude is deadly in 
its effect upon the achievement and happiness of 
any person. 

The Home Can Often Develop Habits of Ap- 
plication. — An investigator has recently made 
inquiry of many university students regarding 
their early schooling. A number of them were 
taught their elementary studies by their father 
or mother. Only a very few had instruction in 
high-school subjects at home. Several of those 
who were taught by father or mother had ap- 
parently saved from three to five years in their 
school course. The other home-taught pupils 
were about even with those who had come up 
through the public schools. The youngest pupil 



162 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

in the university received all his elementary in- 
struction at home. However, he has taken no 
part in any "outside activities." He is not dis- 
tinguished in anything which requires leadership 
of a group. He is not even a member of any 
social organization in the university. He is in- 
terested primarily in books rather than in execu- 
tive or manual work of any kind. He thinks in 
words rather than in objects or concrete situa- 
tions. But he has acquired habits of prolonged 
application to mental tasks. Also he has ac- 
quired an accurate, precise, logical method of 
work, and he secures high ranking in all his 
studies. 

Practically all of the students who have testi- 
jSed regarding their early training and who are 
having hard sledding in the university received 
their elementary instruction in the public schools. 
Their chief defect now is the lack of rigorous ap- 
plication to intellectual tasks. They waste time. 
They are easily distracted. They do not follow a 
regular program of work and play. Instructors 
say they are not attentive in their classrooms. 
They are more eager to play a joke on one of 
their fellows or on their instructors, than they 
are to accomplish the proper work of the school. 

The writer has been able to study a consider- 
able number of pupils who have either failed 
completely in their school work, or who are al- 
ways on the ragged edge. The difficulty in eight 



DISTRACTIONS IN AMERICAN LIFE 163 

out of ten such cases is that they are too easily 
distracted. They do not concentrate on a task 
long enough to master it. They have not learned 
what mastery means. They have no high stand- 
ards of thoroughness and excellence in their work. 
It is a curious fact that most pupils of this type 
exercise their minds more actively to get out of 
completing tasks than actually to perform them. 
They spend an amount of energy and exercise an 
amount of ingenuity in thinking of excuses and 
ways to ''put it over" on an instructor or to 
deceive him or arouse his sympathy, which if 
directed into proper paths would enable them to 
complete their tasks in an excellent manner. 

A parent who has a child coming up to school 
age should visit the kindergarten or first grade 
in the public school in his district. He should 
observe especially the mental habits of the 
pupils. He should note whether they apply them- 
selves to their tasks and master them without dis- 
traction, or whether they are constantly shifting 
from one thing to another. If he finds that appli- 
cation to duties during working hours is the rule 
he may well send his child there. But if he finds 
that pupils are habitually noticing everything 
that is happening around them, and if they think 
it is more clever to "cut up" than to make good 
recitations or master any task in hand, then he 
ought either to try to change the spirit of the 
school, or else to start his child in his work nt 



164 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

home, if concentration can be cultivated in the 
home. 

The child should remain at home until he gains 
well-established mental habits so that he can re- 
sist distractions. When he reaches the place 
where he can attend to a task in hand until he 
completes it, and the feeling for mastery is estab- 
lished, then he should go to a public school so 
that he may receive the discipline which can be 
derived only from working with a group. He will 
gain some advantage, also, from the stimulus 
which always comes from friendly rivalry and 
competition. Further, there will be an advantage 
in his learning how to adjust himself to others, 
provided the social tone in the school is whole- 
some. But if the spirit is unwholesome, if the 
pupils would rather be accomplished in mischief 
than in intellectual work, then the parent should 
keep his child out of the public school, even 
though he may sacrifice something on the social 
side. It is certain that a young pupil will be 
profoundly influenced by the attitude and ideals 
of his group. If they are serious and respectful, 
he will be helped; if they are indifferent, mis- 
chievous, deceptive, he will surely be injured. 

Some Advantages of School Training. — There 
are some kinds of work which cannot be done well 
in the home unless classmates are brought in 
from outside. A pupil cannot learn to express 
himself readily and effectively when he talks only 



DISTRACTIONS IN AMERICAN LIFE 165 

to his father or mother. Expression in all its 
aspects, even in debate and oratory, can come to 
perfection only in the group. Children who are 
taught in the home until they reach college rarely, 
if ever, develop freedom and efficiency in debate, 
or in any form of oral expression. Again, ethical 
and moral action cannot be developed except in a 
limited way unless a pupil is trained in the group. 
No child ever yet learned far-reaching ethical 
and moral lessons simply by being told in the 
home how to conduct himself, or in studying text 
books on conduct. 

The best way for any parent who realizes that 
the school in his community does not train pupils 
in habits of concentration is to attempt to change 
the tone of the school. He probably will not have 
much success if the teachers are required to in- 
struct and care for fifty or sixty pupils. It is 
an exceptional teacher who can teach fifty pupils 
week in and week out, and prevent habits of in- 
attention from developing among them. It is 
unfair to a teacher, and practically useless, to 
complain about distraction in a room in which 
there is incessant change and restlessness, be- 
cause of the large numbers to be taught. Even 
a teacher cannot avoid being tense and distracted 
herself under such conditions. 

Sending Pupils Away to School. — When a 
pupil cannot resist the distractions in his com- 
munity he had better be sent away from home to 



166 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

a school where the environments compel attention 
to study. A concrete instance will illustrate the 
good that may come from such a course. 

A certain boy had completed the sophomore 
year in a high school in a middle western state. 
He had made a low record in his studies. He was 
well endowed physically and mentally, but he did 
not apply himself rigorously to his school tasks. 
He was a favorite among the young people in his 
community, and he was fond of having a good 
time. His parents and his teachers were con- 
stantly urging him to "raise his marks," but 
he kept pretty near the lower limit during his two 
years in school. 

At the beginning of his junior year he went to 
a preparatory school in the East. This school is 
located a number of miles from any town. The 
boys live in the dormitories, and are under guid- 
ance and counsel of the masters all the time. The 
world is shut out of this school. The boys have 
a good time among themselves, but they do not 
participate in any outside activities. The particu- 
lar boy who is the subject of this sketch protested 
vigorously against the arrangements of the school 
during his first few months there. He wanted to 
leave it and return to the high school in his home 
town, but his parents would not listen to it. The 
masters applied pressure to him because they 
felt he was capable of doing a much higher grade 
of work than he was spontaneously inclined to do. 



DISTRACTIONS IN AMERICAN LIFE 167 

He is now well along in bis senior year. He is 
Qear the top of his class. The masters say that 
lie will be placed on the honor roll. He is en- 
thusiastic now about worh ^vhereas formerly he 
was enthusiastic only about parties and a "high 
old time." When he comes home for vacation he 
talks to his former classmates about ''digging 
into work." He is beginning to acquire genuine 
intellectual interests, though a few years past he 
resisted every attempt to induce him to apply 
himself faithfully to any mental task. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE ROLE OF THE FATHER IN THE TRAINING 
OF YOUTH 

The Fatherless Children of America. — Re- 
cently sixty-five men, members of a social club in 
a moderate-sized city, spent an evening in the 
discussion of the topic, "What about our Boys?" 
The man who led in the discussion began by ask- 
ing the question: ''How much time do you men 
spend with your boys every week?" He passed 
around pads and asked each man to think over a 
week's program and write down the time which 
he usually spent with his boys every day. The 
statements made by these men were preserved 
and the writer has been looking them over. They 
serve to impress one fact, — that, speaking gen- 
erally, American fathers are not having vital re- 
lations with their boys — or with their daughters 
either, for that matter — so as to make a deep im- 
pression upon them for good. 

The majority of the men who gave testimony 
respecting the role they are playing in the devel- 
opment of their children do not see much of their 
families on week-day mornings. Usually they 
eat breakfast hurriedly and as a rule the children 

168 



THE ROLE OF THE FATHER 169 

are not at the breakfast table. The men do not 
return to their homes for luncheon. Two or three 
evenings each week they stay down town to attend 
a dinner or a meeting of some kind, and one or 
two evenings they are at their club or have social 
or business engagements. Often on Sunday they 
take trips unaccompanied by their children. Some 
of the men say in their statements that even when 
they are at home the children are off attending 
parties and frequently the weekly program of the 
father and the children turns out so that they 
do not come together for any meal except break- 
fast, and that is so brief and hurried that they do 
not have much to say to one another. So, as a 
matter of fact, these fathers can hardly keep up 
their acquaintance with their children, they see 
them so rarely. 

The children in many of these homes are in the 
public schools. Inquiiy has revealed the fact that 
there is not one man in any of the elementary 
schools in this particular city. There are sixty- 
four teachers in the high school and all but eigh- 
teen of them are women. It is apparent, then, 
that the boys in this city will not come under 
masculine influence to any extent from their birth 
on through the high-school age. 

Who Are Moulding the Character of the 
Youngf — Any father who reads these lines could 
profitably devote a few minutes to making out 
his own program in order to determine how much 



170 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

time lie spends with his children and what he does 
when he is with them. It would prove illuminat- 
ing to every father if he would try to determine 
who are really influencing his children, his boys 
especially, in their development. Undoubtedly 
the mother is to some extent. The teachers are 
probably exerting more influence than the mother. 
But companions and the characters displayed in 
moving pictures and in vaudeville are playing 
the principal role for good or ill. Some influence 
is probably exerted by the characters in history 
and literature, though in many schools these sub- 
jects are so taught that the biographical element 
does not play a prominent part. 

Can any good thing be said for a regime 
wherein fathers play a minor role in the develop- 
ment of their sons? Undoubtedly in certain cases 
it is best that the father's influence should be very 
slight. Some fathers are always in a critical 
attitude toward their sons, and they do them more 
harm than good. When a boy falls into the way 
of thinking of his father as a fault-finder it is best 
for both that they should not be together very 
much. A boy wiio is continually condemned will 
acquire a calloused disposition uhtil in the end 
he will not respond to any criticism, and is likely 
to develop a defensive and resistant attitude 
toward everyone who has authority over him. One 
frequently comes across such boys and they are 
hard to deal with. It would be better for them 



THE ROLE OF THE FATHER 171 

to grow up without any help from their fathers 
rather than for them to become antagonistic 
toward those whom they should respect and obey. 

Compensating Factors. — For those fathers who 
are so situated that they cannot see much of their 
boys there is a compensating factor of consider- 
able value. Sooner or later one's children must 
go out into the world and live with people with 
whom they have no blood relation. They should 
early learn how to adapt themselves to such peo- 
ple. They should discover that in order to get 
on well in the world they must play fair in every 
situation. They must serve as well as be served. 
They must be on the alert to take advantage of 
opportunities. They must be self-reliant; they 
must take the initiative. Usually these qualities 
are not developed in children who are looked 
after too closely by parents. Often boys who are 
thrown on their own resources at eleven or twelve 
achieve greater success than boys who are kept 
under their parents' wings until they reach their 
majority. 

But boys should have contact in some place 
with virile men. Fortunately the women in 
our public schools are, taken as a whole, above 
criticism in respect to personal and intellectual 
characteristics; but even so, a boy needs the 
stimulus and steadying influence which can be 
derived only from close association with vigor- 
ous men. The majority of boys will not do their 



172 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

best unless tliey have virile men to pattern after. 
Add to this the fact that, during adolescence at 
any rate, the typical woman cannot gain a full 
comprehension of a boy's experiences and needs 
and she cannot understand how to handle him in 
certain situations, and it will be apparent why a 
boy in the teens should be trained by men as well 
as by women. 

Taking things as they are in American life, 
would it not be better if men arranged their busi- 
ness programs so that they could be with their 
children at least an hour a day regularly and for 
two or three weeks at a time during vacation 
periods? A certain very busy man recently told 
the writer that he jumped on a train one day with 
his son and went with him to the Pacific Coast. 
The round trip occupied four-and-a-half weeks. 
The father said he took the trip solely for 
the purpose of being with his boy so closely 
that he could study him. As a result, he gained 
a knowledge of the boy's interests and strong 
and weak points which he said was of inestimable 
service in deciding how the boy should be edu- 
cated. This man advised that every father 
should take a trip with his son when none of the 
other members of the family were along so that 
the two of them could become intimately ac- 
quanted. The suggestion is an admirable one 
whenever it is feasible. Of course, a great many 
men cannot take long trips with their sons, but 



THE ROLE OF THE FATHER 173 

they could take short ones lasting for a half or a 
whole day on a holiday or a Sunday. The writer 
knows a number of fathers who go out for a 
week-end camping trip with their sons, and in 
summer they go into the North Woods for a 
two- or three-weeks' trip. 

It is not the intention to give the impression 
that if a father is not with his sons a good part 
of the time the latter are certain to go to perdi- 
tion. This is not of necessity the case. One 
knows boys who are developing in the finest way, 
but who see very little of their fathers. In such 
cases the boys are influenced in the right direc- 
tion by their mothers and by their companions 
and teachers and other associates, and also by the 
moving pictures which they see, and the sugges- 
tions they gain from their reading. In such 
circumstances the father will not be much missed. 
His boys will grow up about as well without him 
as with him. Such a statement may seem to some 
readers to be rather cold and heartless, but it 
is true and it should give comfort to some fathers 
who do not see how they can arrange their pro- 
gram so that they can shape their boys' develop- 
ment to any extent. In such cases they should at 
least see to it that those who^ are shaping their 
boys' lives have vigorous, wholesome masculine 
ideals. 

Types of Fathers and Sons. — Mr. A. i^ the 
father of three boys. They are spoken of in high 



174 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

terms by all who know them. One is doing excel- 
lent work in the high school and the two older 
ones are doing equally well in college. They are 
well-mannered, and their conduct is above re- 
proach. At the same time they are ''good fel- 
lows" with their companions. They are fre- 
quently chosen by their classmates for important 
offices. They are dependable boys. Their teachers 
recognize this and place them uniformly near or 
at the head of their classes. 

The father 's income is modest. The family live 
in a simple but frank and wholesome way. The 
father is an inch or two over six feet in height. 
He received high honors in college in two or three 
branches of athletics. He is a thoroughly mascu- 
line type of man. His associates like him, but his 
boys like him better than anyone else. He is with 
them a good deal. Every summer they spend sev- 
eral weeks together in the woods, or on rivers or 
lakes, usually far away from familiar haunts. On 
these hikes the father is one of the group, only a 
little stronger and more experienced than the 
others. 

One never hears of conflicts between this father 
and his boys. They are just good fellows to- 
gether, — informal, chummy, hearty. They share 
and share alike in everything. He seems to have 
a little better time with his boys than he does 
with anyone else, and he is with them every 
chance he gets. 



THE ROLE OF THE FATHER 175 

What is the chief source of his success with his 
boys? First of all, his physique and his mascu- 
linity. He is a vigorous, positive, dynamic type. 
He never nags the boys; he does not need to do 
so. His personality suggests tremendous power; 
and boys respect and admire power. What the 
father says goes without question, simply because 
he says it. His boys never think of him as being 
selfish or domineering or dictatorial. He is to 
them a strong, masterful, hearty man, who is 
interested in people, his boys particularly, and 
they follow him as they would any born leader. 
Natural leadership is the secret of his power. 

A Different Type. — Mr. B. has a much larger 
income than Mr. A. His family is regarded in 
the community in which he lives as quite aristo- 
cratic. Both Mr. B. and his wife take consider- 
able pride in their distingushed ancestry. They 
have a fine house with elaborate furnishings, and 
they visit at the best houses and entertain the 
elite of their community. In addition to his other 
advantages, Mr. B. is a widely-known scholar in 
his special field. 

There are two boys in this family, but they are 
turning out very differently from Mr. A's boys. 
They have not made a good record in school or 
college. The younger one will not be able to 
complete his college course; he likes cigarettes 
and loafing better than he does his studies and 
his classrooms. These boys have not secured the 



176 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

admiration or confidence either of their class- 
mates or of their teachers. The best way to 
describe them is that they do not count for much 
either with their fellow students or with the 
faculty. 

Mr. B. has practically no companionship with 
his boys. They do not like to be with' him ap- 
parently, and he does not seem to wish to be with 
them. There is not very close companionship 
between the members of Mr. B's family. The 
boys do not pull together very well. They hardly 
ever seem to be entirely in harmony with the 
father. 

Mr. B. is about five feet five inches in height. 
He does not impress anyone as being a vigorous, 
dynamic, masculine type. He does not possess 
qualities of leadership except in purely intel- 
lectual matters. In a company of men of affairs 
Mr. B. would be the least among them. In a com- 
pany of scholars, though, he would stand high. 

He is not pleased with the way his boys are 
developing, and he is constantly complaining 
about their work and their behavior. He prob- 
ably never sees them without upbraiding them. 
He would not think of going on a hike with them. 
He has no interest in such things, and he could 
not succeed in them anyway. People laugh at 
him when they see him trying to do anything 
athletic. So far as his boys are concerned he is 
a neutral type. They have not reached the stage 



THE ROLE OF THE FATHER 177 

where they are impressed by his scholarship. His 
personality is mainly negative; and really about 
the only interest his boys now have in him is that 
he is the source of their income. 

It is hard to say it, but the failure of these 
boys to make good is due mainly to the neutral 
personality of their father. He cannot under- 
stand why they do not appreciate the advantages 
they- have in their excellent home. He feels, too, 
that they are unappreciative of his accomplish- 
ments. They are, because what he has done and 
is now doing is not dynamic and dramatic enough 
to make an appeal to them. This greatly dis- 
tresses and irritates the father. 

Most men possessing Mr. B's physical and 
temperamental characteristics cannot exert a 
strong influence in the lives of their sons. They 
cannot lead them, so they often attempt to drive 
them, and they fail in nine out of ten cases ; and 
the more they complain the farther away their 
boys grow from them. If such a father could 
frankly recognize his handicap in physique and 
dynamic qualities, and if he could arrange it so 
that his boys would come under the leadership of 
other virile men, he would do better than he is 
now doing by them. In time the boys would grow 
to appreciate their father's abilities, qualities, 
and devotion to their welfare, and they would be 
likely to follow his instructions. Such a father 
should proceed on the principle that boys are 



178 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

influenced mainly by masculine types of men and 
by generous good fellowship which ordinarily 
goes with an impressive stature. 

A Still Different Type. — Here is a third type 
of father: Mr. C. is a prominent statesman. He 
is not over five feet five inches in height. But 
his lack in stature is more than offset by his 
powerful voice and impressive features and bear- 
ing. Despite his handicap in stature he is a leader 
among men. Everything about him is thoroughly 
masculine, and he has followers wherever he goes. 
He, too, has a family of boys, and they are his 
best friends. They go with him on his travels, and 
he is their hero. He can sway great multitudes of 
men by his oratory and his dynamic personality, 
and this has deeply influenced his sons. They emu- 
late him in his voice, manner and other character- 
istics, which is sufficient evidence that he is their 
model. While he is much like Mr. B. in physique, 
he is diametrically opposite from him in his mas- 
culinity, and this is chiefly why he has gained a 
firm hold on his boys, and has guided them so 
much better than has Mr. B. 

When a father loses his sons the chances are 
that the trouble lies with him. The last thing he 
ought to do is to complain about his misfortune, 
and especially to nag the boys. If he cannot do 
anything better he must at least grin and bear 
his ill-luck. But lacking the qualities of a leader 
of boys himself he can usually make amends 



THE ROLE OF THE FATHER 179 

therefor by keeping his boys in contact with right- 
minded men who are natural leaders. 

Fathers as Companions of Their Boys, — 
Choose at random a hundred college boys, nine- 
teen or twenty years of age, and listen as a by- 
stander to their talk about their home relations. 
Some of them — a minority — w^ill refer to their 
fathers with genuine cordial feeling. These boys 
think of their fathers as comrades and chums, 
and also as friends and advisers in time of need. 
But the majority of the boys will not speak very 
affectionately or reverently of their fathers. The 
typical boy will refer to his father as ''the old 
man ' ' or the ' ' governor, ' ' which are not terms of 
endearment. The boy looks upon his father as 
the provider of funds, not as a companion or a 
counsellor. Such a boy rarely mentions his father 
except to tell of the tales he has to fix up in order 
to get some "dough." He is not anxious to go ' 
home to see his father ; his chief concern is to get 
checks from him every month. 

These boys who do not manifest warm feeling 
for their fathers usually speak more considerately 
of their mothers. They do not refer to the 
mother as "the old woman." They often say 
they would like to go home to see their mothers. 
For every boy who is anxious to have a visit 
with his "dad" there are fifty who want to visit 
with their mothers. 

The typical father does not play an important 



180 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

role in the life of his boys except in regard to 
money, and then he is the one who has to hold 
them down. Boys have confessed that they have 
never been with their fathers when the latter have 
not complained about money matters, or wasteful- 
ness, idleness and dissipation. The relations be- 
tween many fathers and their sons concern 
finances and discipline almost wholly. 

Fathers are often looked upon as taskmasters 
and policemen. If there is any whipping to be 
done in many homes the father must do it all. 
The children are afraid of him ; he is the bugaboo 
of the place. They do not think of him as a play- 
fellow and a good sport, but only as a disciplin- 
arian. The mother often represents the father to 
the children as a bloodthirsty individual; she 
says that if they do not behave the father will 
make them smart for it when he gets home. When 
there is any expression of affection at all toward 
the children in such a home it usually comes from 
the mother. When a boy of nineteen or twenty, 
then, thinks of his parents, he generally thinks of 
the mother as generous and warm-hearted, and 
his father as col4, stingy, fault-finding and tyran- 
nical. 

There Are Exceptions. — Fortunately, there are 
exceptions. One finds boys who speak of their 
''dad" as they would of an intimate companion. 
They like to be with him, because they have a 
good time with him. They fish with him, hunt 



THE ROLE OF THE FATHER 181 

with him, go off on hikes with him, joke with him; 
in short they are chums together. In such cases 
the financial and disciplinary aspects of the 
father are decidedly subordinated to his genial 
and companionable qualities. 

As a rule, the attitude of the girl toward her 
father is different from that of the boy. Take a 
hundred university girls chosen at random and 
most of them will speak fondly of their fathers. 
American fathers are more kindly and generous 
toward their daughters than toward their sons. 
"Dad" will not complain of his daughter's ex- 
penses. He will not discipline her except gently 
for anything she may do. Indeed, he will often 
defend her against her mother's criticisms. The 
typical father has a sort of chivalric relation to- 
ward his daughter. He is more considerate of her 
wishes than her mother is. So she thinks of him. 
as a good fellow, and she likes him, speaking gen- 
erally. But even these girls who have a loving 
attitude toward their fathers often remember the 
strain and stress in the home resulting from the 
father's efforts to keep down the expenditures of 
his family and to discipline the boys for their lack 
of earnestness and industry. 

The majority of American families are so con- 
ducted that the children are away from home 
much of the time at the liouses of their friends, 
or at social gatherings, or they are entertaining 
their friends. It is becoming ever more difficult 



182 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

for a father to see his family together and have 
them to himself. So a large proportion of chil- 
dren see more of and know more about their 
neighbors than they do their father. About the 
only time they have intim^ate relations with him 
is when they want to make a ** touch. ^' The events 
of every-day life are not talked over by the father 
with his children to any extent in the typical 
American home to-day. In short, the father is 
living one kind of life, and his family are living 
a quite different kind. The only points of contact 
between them relate to money and discipline. 
Happily this is not true of every home ; it is be- 
coming true, though, of a constantly increasing 
proportion of homes. 

One Way to. Remedy the Evil. — How can a 
father avoid having only monetary and punitive 
relations with his children? First of all he must 
establish a financial system in his home which 
will prevent incessant conflict about money. He 
must establish a budget system. Even the man 
who has such abundant means that it is of no 
financial consequence what his family spend or 
how they spend it cannot, as a rule, endure to see 
his sons squandering money to their own de- 
struction; and not infrequently in homes of 
wealth there is constant strain and stress with 
ultimate alienation between fathers and sons be- 
cause the latter go to excess in expenditure of 
money, which usually leads to the acquisition of 



THE ROLE OF THE FATHER 183 

vicious habits of life that sooner or later will 
bring distress upon the individual and all who are 
connected with him. A budget system, rigidly 
adhered to, would often be the means of eliminat- 
ing the chief source of conflict between a wealthy 
father and his children; and the latter would be 
better off from every point of view if they were 
required to adjust their expenses to a definitely- 
fixed allowance. Men of means sometimes permit 
their sons to go to their cashier or banker when- 
ever they wish and draw funds. It seems as if 
such generosity should have a happy outcome; 
but it is only a matter of time until these fathers 
begin to complain of their sons ' wastefulness and 
lack of understanding of the value of money, and 
also their inconsiderate and unappreciative atti- 
tude. 

Women do not readily adapt themselves to a 
budget system. Men learn by hard knocks that 
the only way to run an institution, the home or 
any other, is on a plan wherein each individual 
affected knows how much money he can and may 
spend and for what purposes ; and under no con- 
ditions can he go beyond this. Women do not 
learn this lesson as readily as men do because 
they have more hope and faith that somehow 
everything will come out right. Women trust to 
luck more largely than men do. It is up to the 
father, then, no matter whether his income is a 
thousand dollars or a hundred thousand, to estab- 



184 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

lish early in his family a budget system which 
must prevail no matter what happens. Once the 
members of a family realize that they can depend 
upon a given allowance but they must live within 
this allowance they will get along more happily 
than when there is no understanding about the 
matter and they keep speculating as to how far 
they dare go, and as to what chances there are of 
their increasing their resources by hook or by 
crook. When a family fall into the habit of get- 
ting money whenever they wish by teasing or 
cajoling or hectoring it is difficult to change their 
methods; and under such conditions it is inevita- 
ble that there should be conflict and ill feeling, 
and the father will be regarded as the tyrant of 
the home. He may develop into a chronic cynic 
and pessimist, and acquire the habit of saying but 
little to the members of his family except in com- 
plaint of their wastefulness. 

The Father as a Bread Winner Only. — The 
finances in many families are planned on the as- 
sumption that the father is simply and solely a 
bread-winner. This unhappily is one of the most 
unlovely phases of family life in America. The 
father does not have time or energy to be a chum 
with any member of his family. He cannot relax 
or play because he feels the pressure all the time 
of having to meet the bills of his unreckoning and 
pleasure-seeking family. And they show little 
appreciation of his efforts because they do not 



THE ROLE OF THE FATHER 185 

see the bread-winner at work. He leaves his 
home early in the morning and does not return 
until night-time. During his absence the family 
have been running here and there, doing this and 
that, and they do not observe any difference be- 
tween their own and the bread-winner's day. 
And if the latter complains about his labors and 
his sacrifices he makes little or no impression on 
his family; one cannot impress persons w^ith that 
w^hich they know nothing about, even if he talks 
to them until he is black in the face. Watch a 
typical American family when the father is tell- 
ing them about what he has been up against dur- 
ing the day in his business. They wish he would 
hurry up and get through so they can talk about 
the day's adventures or the next party they will 
attend. And a father need not expect anything 
else, so long as he and his family have little in 
common, and he has no time for the cultivation 
of friendships and chummy relations with them, 
and they do not realize that he is making every 
effort to provide for them. 

The Bread-Winner May Become a Boor. — And 
this leads up to another matter of consequence. 
University boys sometimes speak of their fathers 
in a tone w^hich indicates that the latter are not 
presentable in up-to-date society, because their 
clothes, their speech and their manners have been 
formed under rather rough and commercial con- 
ditions. As a matter of fact, the typical Ameri- 



186 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

can father who is working his head off so that his 
family may keep up with the procession does not 
have leisure or energy sufficient to keep pace with 
them in dress or manners or general up-to-date- 
ness. 

The mother goes to clubs, to lectures and to 
social and art meetings for general improvement, 
but the father goes to nothing of the sort. Sooner 
or later he gets to be looked upon as more or less 
of a boor, which he often is. He is just a money- 
getter; he has made the mistake of letting his 
family acquire all the social graces while he has 
paid the price. 

Many American men realize that they are only 
machines running at full capacity to produce dol- 
lars for their families. When one listens to their 
talk he can tell that they feel they are not appre^ 
ciated. This tends to make them cranky and dis- 
agreeable in their homes. So it comes about that 
many a man who is devoting all his energies to 
making his family comfortable does not receive 
any affection or consideration from those for 
whom he labors, simply because in their presence 
he is sour, taciturn, fault-finding, irascible. We 
cannot have affection for this kind of person, no 
matter how much money he earns for us. So you 
fathers who have read through to this point, you 
would have a better status in your own families 
if you spent less of your energy in making money 
and more of it in making friends with your wife 



THE ROLE OF THE FATHER 187 

and your children and being agreeable in their 
presence. 

Expensive Luxuries Usually Disrupt a Family. 
— Here is an illustration. A father thought he 
would be conferring a favor upon his family, con- 
sisting of his wife and three children, if he would 
buy an expensive automobile. He reasoned that 
it would be a means of keeping the family to- 
gether, and he thought they would certainly be 
appreciative of his generosity and self-sacrifice. 
But as it has worked out the automobile is an 
additional cause of conflict. The children wish 
to use it much of the time for the pleasure of their 
friends and themselves. The father has to work 
harder to provide for the up-keep of the thing. 
Instead of seeing more of his family he sees less 
of them than he did formerly. Instead of their 
being thankful for his devotion, they are, if any- 
thing, less appreciative, because they are in a 
different kind of life altogether. Only a very 
small part of their thoughts and feelings have 
any relation to the father. They are so obsessed 
by their own enterprises and pleasures that the 
thought of self-sacrifice for them on the part of 
anyone rarely, if ever, enters their heads. 

The Father Must Grin and Bear It. — But no 
matter how deeply a man may feel about the ex- 
travagance and indifference of his family he 
ought at any rate to keep his poise and hold in 
check a sarcastic or critical tongue. Out in the 



188 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

world a man learns inhibition. He soon discovers 
that he cannot give way to every impulse which 
stirs within him. Women are more mobile and 
volatile, and so less inhibited than men. A woman 
cannot help but give way to her deeper feelings. 
But the man can help it, and he ought to help it. 
If he cannot preserve poise in his family, then 
there is certain to be strain and stress. If he 
does not like the way matters are going he cannot 
remedy the situation by flaring up. When a 
father loses his head in dealing with the mem- 
bers of his family he will at the same time cer- 
tainly lose their respect and admiration. 

Finally, a father should avoid gaining the repu- 
tation of being merely a pain-giver in his family. 
He should resist having the administration of all 
penalties put off on him. He might better let 
some deserved punishments go altogether than to 
develop in his children the conviction that his 
chief function is to give them pain. For every 
occasion that he makes a child feel unpleasant he 
should make him feel happy at least ten times. A 
father should become established in his children's 
thoughts and feeling as the chief source of their 
pleasure, of their good times, of cheerfulness and 
of laughter. In short, he should be thought of as 
a good scout rather than as the cause of disap- 
pointment and tears. 



CHAPTER VII 
THE GOVERNMENT OF YOUTH 

Democracy in Dealing with the Young. — As 
these lines are being written, the United States 
is engaged in a mighty conflict with autocracy. 
We are determined to continue the struggle until 
the world is set free from domination by self- 
constituted tyrants. We are committed to a de- 
fense of the policy that men and women every- 
where must be free to think and to work as they 
choose in so far as they do not trespass on the 
rights of their fellows. That form of govern- 
ment in which a few impose their will arbitrarily 
upon others is passing; no man or group of men 
can much longer continue by divine right or any 
other right to domineer over their fellows. 
America w^ill help to establish the rule through- 
out the world that every man, woman and child is 
entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happi- 
ness uncontrolled and unrestricted by others so 
long as he plays the game fair, and orders his life 
in accordance with rules of right and justice 
which will be binding upon all alike. 

These principles which we are attempting to 

180 



190 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

have established throughout the world deserve 
recognition as well in the home as in the state. 
Every home in which there are adults and chil- 
dren is or should be a miniature state. The ques- 
tion of freedom of thought and action is just as 
vital and pressing in the home as it is in the state. 
Problems of privileges, rights, duties and respon- 
sibilities come up for consideration every day in 
most homes where young people are developing. 

The typical parent is not democratic in the 
treatment of his children. He likes to govern by 
mandate or exhortation. He dogmatically asserts 
his views on every question that arises, and in- 
sists that he knows more than his children, and he 
has little respect for their ''notions." One can 
listen to a parent telling his thirteen-year-old boy. 
say, what kind of cap he must wear, and how and 
when he must wear it, though the boy says the 
other boys will ''snicker" at him, and he does not 
want to be "the goat" of the crowd. But the 
parent will listen to no argument; he says he 
knows better than the boy does what the latter 
should do, and he does not care what the "other 
boys" think. 

The Chief Cause of Conflict Between Parents 
and Children. — Much of the conflict between 
parents and children is due to the fact that the 
former do not recognize the right of the latter to 
express opinions contrary to their own on any 
question or problem whatsoever. One can hear 



THE GOVERNMENT OF YOUTH 191 

such a parent say: **I will teacli you to obey. 
When your opinions are wanted, I w^ill ask for 
them," and so on. Many of Dickens' books were 
written to expose and condemn this autocratic, 
domineering, tyrannical attitude of parents to- 
ward their children. 

Nature has implanted in everyone, whether 
child or adult, a passion to be free from domina- 
tion by others. A normal human being, after the 
period of infancy at any rate, tenaciously resists 
those who arbitrarily attempt to rule him. 
Nature says to him: "Be independent; assert 
your rights; do not let your individuality be de- 
stroyed by any domineering person." 

In some homes parents never ask children what 
they think in regard to any problem of conduct. 
They say: ''Do this" or "Do that." They do 
not say: "What shall we do about this or about 
that?" "Is it right or best to do so and so?" 

Fortunately the number of homes in which the 
life is conducted on a democratic plan is increas- 
ing. Mary Roberts Rhinehart has recently told 
the story of her own home life. She says that 
practically every problem affecting anyone in the 
home is discussed by the parents and the children 
together, and the best solution offered by any 
member of the family is the one accepted. In 
such a home quite young children will generally 
see that the views of their parents are sounder 
than their own, and they will accept and follow 



THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

them ; but tliey are likely to resist mere autocratic 
commands when there has been no discussion of 
what is the proper course to take in any situation. 

The Democratic Way Is the Happiest Way. — 
A parent who has not tried to solve problems of 
conduct by discussion with his children has not 
governed them in the best way. Again, a parent 
who has not learned to restrain his own views on 
questions affecting members of the family while, 
he listens to the views of his children has missed 
the greatest pleasure to be derived from being a 
parent. Any one w^ho is not an autocrat will find 
only delight in observing how his children's 
minds work on the difficulties which are encoun- 
tered in the management of the home. He will 
be exhilarated when he sees how their views en- 
large every day as they develop, and how they 
gradually bring their selfish desires under control 
so that they can appreciate and observe principles 
of right and justice and fair play themselves, and 
insist upon others observing them. A parent who 
is a bully never can gain an insight into his chil- 
dren's thoughts about conduct, and so he can 
never know what fine sport it is to be a parent. 

A monarchical form of government is just as 
objectionable in the home as it is in the state. 
Here in America we should apply the principles 
of democracy to the home more than has been 
done in any other country. This does not mean 
that young and immature children should deter- 



THE GOVERNMENT OF YOUTH 193 

mine the way in which the home should be man- 
aged; but it does mean that, increasingly as they 
develop, they should be encouraged to express 
their opinions on every problem relating to the 
internal workings of the home and its relation to 
the other homes of the community. This kind of 
government will tend to make children reason- 
able ; it will develop self-restraint, and the atmos- 
phere of the home will be made more cheerful 
thereby. It will have other advantages, too, be- 
cause the views of the children in regard to the' 
relation of the home to other homes in the com- 
munity will often be sounder than the views of 
the parents themselves. 

Children who were still in their teens 
have been heard discussing with their parents 
problems concerning the adjustment of the home 
to community practices, and the views of the chil- 
dren were saner than those of the parents because 
they were more intimately in touch with the sen- 
timent of the community. The parents retained 
the views they had formed in their childhood and 
were out-of-date when they were debating pres- 
ent-day matters with the children. Parents have 
been heard dogmatically telling their adolescent 
boys and girls what companions they should culti- 
vate, how they should dress and act, what studies 
they should take, what their table manners should 
be, and so on ad libitum; and it would have been 
better for the children if they could have decided 



194 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

these matters largely in their own way after dis- 
cussing them with the parents. 

Youth Is Exuberant. — But some parents will 
say "I cannot endure to hear my children talk 
and see them act as though they knew more about 
life than their elders." But a parent .should 
understand that young children are exuberant in 
their self-assertion. A sensible parent will not 
be disturbed by this. He will know that self- 
restraint will develop with age; he will know, 
further, that he can help his children to become 
reasonable only as he allows them to express 
themselves so that he can see wherein they are 
unreasonable. Children who are ruled autocrat- 
ically may keep quiet ; but when they escape from 
tyranical control they are likely to go to the other 
extreme. This is true of nations as it is of indi- 
viduals. People who have been held in bondage 
go to all lengths in disorder when they are re- 
leased, as the Eussian revolution now in progress 
indicates; but people who live under democratic 
conditions learn how to regulate their actions. 
This lesson has been illustrated hundreds of times 
in the history of the world; and any observant 
person can see it illustrated in the homes he 
knows. 

Respect a Child's Self -Made Programs. — Many 
parents think a boy or girl should never have 
any plans which should be respected by the 
parents, and this is the cause of endless difficul- 



THE GOVERNMENT OF YOUTH 195 

ties, as the following instance illustrates. S. D., 
a boy of sixteen years, was regarded by Ms 
parents as lazy and selfish. He would not gladly 
help with any of the work about the home. His 
mother was in the habit of asking him to do 
errands and sometimes to assist with the house- 
work, but he never responded willingly and pleas- 
antly to any requests for his assistance. He was 
rather taciturn and he seemed to have a chip on 
his shoulder much of the time. 

Away from his home, he was quite jolly and he 
was known by his "pals" as a good fellow. He 
could talk as readily as any of his companions 
and he enjoyed visiting with them. But when- 
ever he came into his own house his temper 
changed. He expected that some task would be 
assigned him or that some complaint would be 
lodged against him. He was in a defensive atti- 
tude against his faults most of the time. This 
was due to the fact that his mother had always 
been in the habit of asking him to do chores about 
the house. He had not complied with her requests 
readily and so he had received a good deal of 
criticism. As a consequence he had developed a 
rather unfriendly, surly relation toward the mem- 
bers of his family, especially his mother who had 
been his chief critic. 

A year ago he took a position on a farm. He 
began his work in April and continued until Octo- 
ber. He did a man's work, so his employer said. 



196 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

He was up before five in the morning and often 
in the field before half -past six. His day's work 
was not finished until seven at night. He worked 
on this plan all summer. His employer states 
that he carried out this strenuous program with- 
out complaint, and that he never showed anger or 
hostility when he was asked to perform any task. 

When he returned to his home in October he 
was in a different frame of mind than w^hen he left 
in the spring. His sullen attitude had disap- 
l^eared. He was cheerful, good-humored, talkative 
and very responsive to requests for his assistance 
about the house. The constant comment of the 
parents was, ''The boy is completely changed. 
What could have happened to him?" 

But the change was not permanent. It lasted 
for four or five weeks, and then he began to slip 
backward. His conversation in the home gradu- 
ally declined until it ceased almost completely. 
After two months the mother observed with great 
regret that the boy's earlier traits had again be- 
come prominent, and she could not understand 
why he had not retained the good feeling and 
cordial attitude toward her which he had when 
he returned from the farai. 

The Salutary Influence of a Regular Program. 
— Here is the explanation. When he was working 
on the farm he had a regular daily program to 
follow. He knew what would be demanded of him 
each day. He would be alone in the fields for 



THE GOVERNMENT OF YOUTH 197 

hours at a time with no one telling him to do this 
or that or come here or go there. Often he would 
follow the same plan of work for weeks and his 
employer would not need to give him any direc- 
tions. In brief, he lived a quiet, regular and un- 
disturbed life on the farm; and he was his own 
boss much of the time. So there was very little 
if anything to irritate him or offend his sense of 
independence. 

But when he returned to his home there was no 
regular program of tasks to follow. He wished to 
do many things every day suggested by his com- 
panions and by what was taking place in his en- 
vironment. He wished to go quite frequently to 
moving picture shows. He liked often to walk on 
the streets simply studying the crowd; he was 
fascinated by the stream of human life which he 
could observe any time on the streets. He liked 
to read a good deal, and of course he had his 
tasks in school to perform. But his mother would 
break into his plans at any time with a request 
that he should do an errand for her. She never 
considered the proper time to make her request; 
she made it whenever she thought of it, which 
was often when the boy was in the midst of an 
attractive story or was just about to keep an en- 
gagement with a chum. The mother acted on the 
theory that the boy had no obligations which 
should be respected. His time belonged to the 
family, and it was fitting to impose a task upon 



198 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

him at any moment. This irritated him and in- 
evitably he began to take a defensive attitude 
against the incessant interference with his plans. 
He developed a kind of self-protective method 
against his mother in particular and against all 
the members of the family in general. It was a 
family trait for one member not to take any ac- 
count of the plans of any other member in the 
matter of making requests. In this family the 
mother was chiefly at fault; she exercised little 
or no self-restraint in the issuing of commands to 
the members of the family and especially to this 
boy. The more indifferent, resistant and even 
hostile he became, the more requests she made of 
him, in the belief that if she did not keep eternally 
at him he would develop into a selfish, mean and 
disagreeable man. 

Avoiding Irritation and Conflict. — Many 
parents treat children as though they had no right 
to make any plans. But whether or not they have 
a right to do so, they surely do make plans; and 
if these are constantly obstructed they will de- 
velop irritability, meanness, and resistance to re- 
quests and authority in every form. The typical 
parent who thinlvs a boy's unwillingness to do 
chores cheerfully is due to '^ natural meanness" 
needs to appreciate that in these days the young 
have their days crammed so full of attractive 
activities that there is not nearly time enough to 
do them all without the demands of parents on 



THE GOVERNMENT OF YOUTH 199 

the little leisure that is left after school hours are 
taken out. There are the interesting happenings 
that have to be told to one's chums; there are the 
secrets that have to be gone over together; there 
are the games that must be played with one's 
fellows ; and there are the curious people, curious 
places and the new things of the neighborhood 
and surrounding territory that must be seen. 

Human nature is so constituted that any one 
will become disagreeable and rebellious toward 
those who are always upsetting his plans. This 
is not to say, of course, that children should not 
have any tasks to perform about the home. They 
should have some chores, but they ought to un- 
derstand definitely what chores they have to do 
each day and at what hour they must attend to 
them. The daily program should not be varied 
except under very unusual conditions. It should 
be the aim of the parents to bring a boy as 
rapidy as possible to the point where he can at- 
tend to his duties without supervision or direc- 
tion from any one. The moment he becomes self- 
directive he will perform his tasks with less fric- 
tion than when he is supervised by parents or 
anyone else. The less that has to be said to a 
boy about his chores, the more cheerfully he is 
likely to do them. It is not so much the work, no 
matter what it may be, which is likely to irritate 
a boy; it is the presence of persons who talk to 
him incessantly about doing it properly. Work 



200 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

does not usually arouse hostility in a boy, but 
those who direct him often do. 

Let the Boy Try His Wings. — One who has 
read Dickens' books will recall that several of 
them were written for the purpose of inducing 
parents and school masters to give the young per- 
sons in their charge greater freedom of action 
than they were allowed in the author's day. The 
lot of children, boys especially, was a hard one in 
England in Dickens' time. The maxim that a 
young person should be seen and not heard was 
followed religiously. Parents and school masters 
treated the young as though they had no rights 
to speak of. They were always to do as they 
were bid. They were always to serve and were 
not to expect service in return. In the presence 
of adults they were to be humble and subservient. 
They were never to offer their opinion in opposi- 
tion to the opinion of a parent or a teacher. They 
were not to suggest what they would like to do; 
they were to ask what was the pleasure of those 
in authority that they should do. 

The lines of the young in America have fallen 
in pleasanter places. They enjoy freedom of ac- 
tion which is unknown to children in most foreign 
countries. Their individuality is, speaking gen- 
erally, recognized and respected, which was not 
the case in Dickens' time in England, and is not 
the case now in most European countries. As a 
consequence, children are happier here than they 



THE GOVERNMENT OF YOUTH 201 

are in any other country, and there is less con- 
flict between parents and teachers on the one 
side and children on the other. 

But there are American parents who in dealing 
with their children pursue the policy which was 
followed in Dickens' time. That is to say, they 
treat them as though their opinions were entitled 
to no consideration. They order them to do this 
and not to do that. A\nien a child, a boy espe- 
cially, suggests that he would like to do a certain 
thing, that is the very thing which he cannot be 
permitted to do. Unfortunately, such parents 
usually think they ought to keep their boys always 
under their eye and hand so that they can 
train them in good habits. A concrete instance 
will illustrate the methods pursued by these 
fathers. 

A Concrete Instance of Parental Autocracy. — 
A boy eighteen years of age, living on a farm in 
a middle-western state, wished to attend a col- 
lege in the eastern part of the country. Two boys 
that he knew had attended the college and had 
given him a glowing description of the institution. 
He was a faithful boy and a good worker. He 
liked occasionally to go to near-by towns and see 
the life on the street, and he had three or four 
girl friends whom he visited once in a while. His 
father thought this was evidence that he was not 
very serious-minded; and he concluded that he 
would have to be trained pretty rigorously in 



202 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

order that he might take charge of the farm later 
on. So his father kept a tight rein on him. He 
lectured the boy a good deal about application to 
business, and when the latter made the request 
to go to the eastern college the father would not 
listen to him. There is a little one-horse college 
about sixty miles from where the boy lives, and 
the father told him that if he would attend strictly 
to business and do a full day's work on the farm 
every working day during the summer he might 
be permitted to have a few months at the college 
in the winter. The father maintained that in tak- 
ing this course he was doing the boy a real favor. 
It was suggested to the father that it would be 
a means of grace for every one concerned if the 
boy could go a long ways from home and stay 
away for nine or ten months. He needed to get 
out into the world and learn how to adapt himself 
to people. It was represented to the father that 
when the boy came back to the farm he would fit 
into the situation better than if he were kept 
tethered at home constantly. The father replied 
that if the boy went to the eastern college he 
would have to earn every cent he would need for 
his trip and education. One can hear the boy say 
now that his father is ^'grumpy" much of the 
time. For days at a stretch they do not have much 
to say to each other. The father is on the offen- 
sive and the boy is on the defensive. The other 
members of the family feel the strain and stress 



THE GOVERNMENT OF YOUTH 203 

developing between father and son. This will go 
on from bad to worse the longer they have to 
associate with one another. The more they see of 
each other while they are in their present state 
of mind, the more antagonistic they will become. 

When a Boy Should Leave Home. — If the 
father were wise he would encourage the boy to 
go to college and he would provide a reasonable 
fund for his maintenance. He owes it to the boy 
for one thing ; and even for his own peace of mind 
he should do so, for life on the farm would be 
more agreeable when the boy returned. But since 
the father is unwilling to do this it would be 
better for the boy to go anyway and work to pay 
his own expenses. He needs to get away from 
the farm. If he cannot do anything else, it would 
be better for him to work on another farm for a 
while than to remain at home. If he should stay 
away long enough his father might miss him and 
be glad to have him back; but he should not re- 
turn until both he and his father think better of 
one another than they do now. 

The father is clearly at fault in this particular 
case. He is hedging his boy about with needless 
restrictions and he is hypercritical. If he would 
say to his boy; ''I am quite willing you should 
go to college or any other place if you wish to; 
you have worked faithfully here and I will give 
you as much money as I can spare; you may stay 
until you feel that you would like to come home, ' ' 



204 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

— if he would say something like this in a good 
spirit he would put his boy in the right frame of 
mind. The boy might venture out into the world, 
but he would probably be glad to come back again 
feeling more content with his home than he is at 
present. A father ought to suggest to his boy 
that he go out into the world when the latter 
seems to be dissatisfied about the home. The boy 
should be given the impression that the father is 
not trying to restrict his freedom. Boys would 
not run away from home as they so frequently do 
if they felt that their parents were willing to give 
them considerable leeway. 

Finally, parents should remember that nature 
has worked on the plan of having the young 
leave the home nest early. When birds reach a 
certain age they are seized with a passion to leave 
the nest and not to return to it. Young animals 
are always eager to leave the locality in which 
they were born and seek out new fields. So it is 
with human beings, boys especially. Nature evi- 
dently intends that families should not hold to- 
gether too tenaciously. She wishes the members 
of one family to intermingle with the members of 
other families. Only in this way could society 
have been developed. So it is inevitable that a 
normal boy should wish to tiy his wings and 
parents should not clip them. 

Loosening Home Ties. — Many parents cannot 
bear to have a child of any age leave home unless 



THE GOVERNMENT OF YOUTH 205 

they accompany him. They fear that some harm 
may come to him or he may become lonely in 
strange places or he may suffer from homesick- 
ness. Such parents are always woriying about a 
child when he is out of their sight. They look 
after his needs so continuously at home that they 
feel something has dropped out of their lives 
when they do not have him where they can serve 
him. 

A child brought up in this way is apt to remain 
dependent for life upon his parents or someone 
else. He looks to them or to others to smooth out 
the hard places for him. He does not gain ex- 
perience in meeting people and adjusting himself 
to them. When friends call at the house and the 
boy is present the mother or father is likely to do 
his talking for him. If he is asked a question 
about how he likes his school, for example, the 
parents and not the boy make the chief reply. It 
is not uncommon to find parents who make prac- 
tically all the responses for their children. The 
latter sit silent and helpless while the parents 
talk for them and even think for them. Of 
course, there is no reason why a child should de- 
velop resourcefulness and initiative in conversing 
or doing anything else when his parents act for 
him. If he wishes to secure a job, for instance, 
the father will probably make the application for 
him. If he is required to send information about 
himself the mother will be likely to furnish it in- 



206 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

stead of requiring him to attend to the matter. 
One could not think of a better program than this 
to make an individual incompetent, and in the end 
discontented and uninteresting. 

Wlien children who have always leaned on their 
parents are compelled to leave home they are gen- 
erally overcome with homesickness. The world 
seems a cold, bitter place to them ; and the people 
they meet appear to be unsympathetic, unfriendly 
and indifferent. The world does not return to an 
individual more than it receives from him; and 
one who has got into the habit of expecting that 
he will always be served without rendering serv- 
ice will have a hard row to hoe. He will think 
people are mean, selfish and uncharitable when 
he is solely responsible for their attitude toward 
him. 

Make Children Independent of Parents and 
Home. — The moral is that parents should begin 
quite early to make their children independent of 
them. Mothers and fathers ought to subdue the 
parental instinct to do everything for their off- 
spring and to tether them closely to their home. 
When a child reaches the teens he should be able 
to go away from home for considerable periods 
without experiencing homesickness or loneliness 
or lack of self-confidence. He should be fond of 
his father and mother, of course, but he should 
not be so dependent upon them for service or for 
friendship that he is miserable and helpless when 



THE GOVERN^IENT OF YOUTH 207 

they are not within calling distance. From one 
point of view the less a child thinks about his 
home when he is away from it the better prepared 
he is to meet the problems which he will en- 
counter in the world. This does not mean that he 
should not have affection for his father and 
mother and brothers and sisters. He certainly 
should have. But this affection should not be so 
intense that it will be the cause of his undoing 
when he cannot be with the members of his family. 

It sometimes happens that an almost abnormal 
attachment develops between a father and daugh- 
ter and a mother and son. Dr. Barker, of Johns 
Hopkins University, a special student of nervous 
disorders, has warned parents not to allow too 
close an attachment to develop between their 
children and themselves because it may become 
morbid. A daughter's sentiments should not be- 
come so centered upon her father that they can- 
not be detached from him and bestowed upon 
some other man. The same is true of the attach- 
ment of the son to his mother. The latter is less 
likely to occur than the former, however. 

Self Government Among Boys. — When boys 
reach the teens they should be given experience 
in governing themselves. We can gain a useful 
lesson in regard to this matter by a study of the 
English Public Schools in which self government 
is developed to a high degree. These schools are 
not public in the sense in which the schools are in 



208 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

this country. They are not supported at public 
expense; they are private institutions designed 
for boys alone. They charge tuition, and they 
may reject any applicant. There are about a 
hundred of these schools now in England. Some 
of them date back several centuries, while a num- 
ber of them have been established during the 
present century. The best known representatives 
of these Public Schools are Rugby, Eton, and 
Harrow; but the others are like them in general 
characteristics. Boys enter schools of this tj^pe at 
about the age of thirteen and remain six years 
or more. 

The chief distinction of these Public Schools is 
their corporate life. They are essentially self- 
governing institutions. The youngest members 
are in a certain sense servants to the older ones. 
It is the custom for an older boy to have a 
younger one as a **fag" who will serve his master 
in any way that the latter may desire. The boys 
who have been in the school longest, the ** sixth 
form" boys, constitute the rulers of the school. 
The teachers, or ''masters" as they are called, 
are not the disciplinarians of the school as is the 
case in this country. If a boy is guilty of a mis- 
demeanor at Eton, say, the teachers do not sit 
on his case in the first instance. The boys them- 
selves take it up. If it is necessary to administer 
punishment, they do it. Of course, the head- 
master and his associates may in a crisis take the 



THE GOVERNMENT OF YOUTH 209 

government of the school in their own hands, but 
this rarely occurs. 

The Fagging System. — Those who have read 
Tom Broum of Rughy have doubtless formed the 
notion that the fagging system is very brutal. It 
undoubtedly was severe in an earlier day, but it 
has been somewhat modified in our times. Still 
the principle prevails that the youngest boys must 
serve, and the older boys must rule. 

The masters live with their pupils in a more 
intimate and vital way than do the teachers in the 
schools of this country. The masters and the 
boys constitute a community together. They are 
sufficient unto themselves. The outside world 
does not break into the seclusion of these schools 
to any appreciable extent. The masters and the 
boys form intimate associations and develop a 
give-and-take sort of life, which does not exist in 
our own country, at least not in our public schools. 
The distractions and seductions of the world 
which play such an important part in our own 
schools are shut out of the English schools. 

There is very little rivalry for social prestige 
among the pupils of these schools. Ambition and 
talent are exercised principally in competition for 
athletic and academic honors. The atmosphere 
of one of these schools is surcharged with success 
in examinations and athletics. While in our own 
schools the boy or girl who can dance best or 
dress the most elaboratelv or drive the most 



210 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

costly automobile is often distinguished above all 
the other pupils, such a thing would be impossible 
in the English Public Schools. Even when the son 
of the King goes to Eton, he leaves all his social 
distinctions behind him, and becomes a fag the 
same as any other boy. If he gets ahead at all, 
it must be because of his being better than other 
boys in athletics or in examinations, 

Travnmg in Government. — There can be no 
doubt that these schools have contributed to the 
development of the British Empire. For the 
most part, the men who govern the Empire have 
been trained in Eugby, Eton, Harrow, or one of 
the other schools of this type. It can be seen that 
the organization and administration of these 
schools assists in the training of men to rule. The 
sixth-form boy, who has experience in governing 
the school, acquires knowledge which will be 
valuable for him when he comes to play the role 
of governor of India or Egypt or some of the 
other English dependencies. 

Our owTi schools give little or no training in 
government in the sense in which the English 
Public Schools do. The nearest approach to it 
in this country is in military academies in which 
boys possessing ability in leadership secure posi- 
tions as officers and govern the cadets in the insti- 
tutions. There is less scope, however, for the 
governing ability of boys in a military school than 
in a school like Eton or Rugby, because in the 



THE GOVERNMENT OF YOUTH 211 

foiTQer military rule prevails, and a cadet officer 
simply enforces the established rules. But while 
in Eton there are traditional rules, still every 
case possesses certain individual characteristics 
which must be investigated and weighed in deter- 
mining rewards or penalties. 

If we could introduce into all our public schools 
the principles of self-government, following the 
English method, but not carrying it quite so far, 
it would certainly prove of distinct service. It 
would be valuable for the pupils who are gov- 
erned as well as for those who govern them. 
Pupils have more regard for government admin- 
istered by their own representatives than they do 
for that administered by teachers, who are re- 
garded as aliens to a certain extent, and their rule 
is resented. Often pupils who will rebel against 
a penalty set by a school principal will take the 
same thing without a whimper when it is admin- 
istered by a court composed of their schoolmates. 

And then the welfare of our country demands 
that boys who possess ability to govern should 
have a chance early to gain practical experience 
in it. It would be of service to any community 
and to the nation if we had an effective system of 
selecting out the leaders among the boys and the 
girls, too, in our high schools, and giving them 
practical training in administering government in 
an intelligent, equitable and effective way. This 
movement is already started in some places, but 



212 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

it ought to be helped along in every community. 

Government by Nagging. — Contrasted with the 
method of self-government sketched above is the 
method of nagging still employed too generally in 
our country. This method is illustrated in the 
case of a certain mother who chastises her boy for 
his misdeeds by ceaseless upbraiding. He is now 
fourteen years of age, and his father has not 
played a prominent part in his training. Since he 
was three years of age the mother has found it 
juecessary to correct him for a great variety of 
mischievous actions which have brought trouble 
on both him and herself. She has thought that 
the proper way to deal with him whenever he 
was detected in wrong-doing was to try to make 
him ashamed of his conduct so that he would do 
differently in the future. The mother has a high- 
pitched voice, and she gives it full rein whenever 
she is taking her boy to task for his errors ; and 
the more annoying his offense, the louder her 
tones of admonition and criticism. She believes 
that the greater the crime the louder should be 
the correction thereof, and the longer should be 
the period of verbal chastisement. 

One may often hear her talking to the boy in 
this strain : ' * I have spoken to you a great many 
times about this matter. I have told you how 
wrong it is for you to do a thing like this. You 
ought to know better. You have had good oppor- 
tunities to learn what is right. You have no ex- 



THE GOVERNMENT OF YOUTH 213 

cuse for your actions. You say you 'forgot', but 
that is no excuse. A boy of your age and your 
bringing up ought not to forget. If you had the 
right disposition about it, you would not forget. 
You do not seem to have any sense of shame 
about such things. You do not see other boys of 
your age and training doing as you do. I can- 
not keep talking to you always about this, and if 
you cannot do as you should, I will see that you 
are put where you will have to do it. I have been 
patient with you, but you do not seem to appre- 
ciate or care about what I do for you. I will give 
you warning now that I cannot stand this much 
longer. I am often ashamed for you because you 
do not seem to have any sense of what you ought 
to do." 

And she goes on, modifying her phrases here 
and there, but repeating the same thoughts over 
and over for fifteen or twenty minutes at a 
stretch. But what she says does not have much 
if any effect on the boy, except while he is right 
before her and listening to her words of denun- 
ciation and exhortation. Five minutes after he 
has received a violent scolding he appears often 
to have forgotten about it, and he is as light- 
hearted and mischievous as before. The mother's 
discipline does not reach his springs of conduct 
and control his action. He seems now to be 
rather hardened to these verbal castigations. 

Unfortunately, this boy has been attending 



214 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

school where the discipline is much like that which 
has been used by his mother. The teachers in the 
school are noisy in their correction of pupils. 
Corporal punishment is forbidden, and the teach- 
ers feel that since they cannot inflict dermal pain 
they must give pupils good tongue lashings fre- 
quently. In some of the rooms in this school the 
teacher 's voice is used much of the time in telling 
pupils of their faults and commanding them to 
mend their ways or they will come to grief. It is 
a traditional belief in the school that a good dis- 
ciplinarian knows how to talk vociferously and 
sharply when pupils are caught in any kind of 
wrong-doing. In the springtime when the win- 
dows are open, one could hang around in the little 
playground attached to the school, and he could 
collect a choice vocabularly of terms of reproach, 
condemnation and exhortation issuing from most 
of the schoolrooms. 

A Different Method of Government. — Glance 
now at a different method of training practiced in 
a home where there are five children, two girls 
and three boys. The father is a supervising 
principal of a school, a man of distinction, but 
he is slight of body and his boys are taller and 
stronger than he is. At first glance one might 
suppose he would be deficient as a disciplinarian ; 
but as a matter of fact, he has never had any par- 
ticular trouble in controlling boys either in his 
home or in the schools under his charge. The 



THE GOVERNMENT OP YOUTH 215 

reason of his success would be apparent to any 
one who might have an opportunity to study him 
before his pupils, or talking to his own children. 
He is a man of few words, and he is never loud 
or noisy. When he has in hand a serious problem 
in correction, he grows rather more quiet than he 
is at other times. He chooses his words with 
precision, but every one that he utters seems to 
go straight to the mark. If you should hear him 
talk you would feel that he meant a great deal 
more than he said. You could not escape the con- 
viction that what he proposed to do was to act 
and not to talk about any matter in hand. Usu- 
ally when he has occasion to sj)eak to a school by 
way of criticising the behavior of pupils, one 
could hear a pin drop anywhere in the room. 
There is something about the man that commands 
attention and respect, and nobody ever doubts 
that he intends to put his words into effect. For- 
tunately for him, he does not say much, and so he 
does not have to back up on promises and threats 
which he might not be able to carry out. 

In his home he is quiet and self-controlled in 
his discipline, as he is in the schoolroom. The 
expression of his eye and of his face and the tone 
of his voice carry conviction. He deliberately re- 
strains the tendency to become noisy when he is 
dealing with a serious case of misconduct. He 
has discovered that it is not loudness of voice or 
an agitated manner that strikes deeply into the 



216 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

offender, but it is rather the suggestion of indig- 
nation accompanied by determination to put an 
end to wrong action that produces a salutary 
effect upon a mischief maker. 

Government by "Bawling Out." — Mrs. A. is 
the mother of four children — a son and three 
daughters. The oldest girl is in the junior year 
in college. She has made a brilliant record from 
the time she was in the kindergarten until the 
present. When the mother is out in company she 
speaks with pride of her daughter's ability and 
she enjoys having her friends praise the girl. 
But when she is at home she complains about the 
girl's lack of domestic interests; she says she 
never does anything in the house of any conse- 
quence. If the girl tries to cook anything, say, 
the mother is as likely as not to tell her that it is 
all wrong and that she cannot do anything right. 
The girl has a gentle, submissive disposition and 
humbly endures the frequent chiding. The mother 
often mentions the girl's domestic shortcomings 
before the other members of the family, so fre- 
quently in fact that the brother and sister some- 
times say, ''Why are you forever 'bawling her 
out?' How would you like to be 'bawled out' all 
the time?" 

The girl has always had warm friends among 
her classmates. She belongs to several clubs and 
societies. Everyone likes her and she has a cor- 
dial time when she is with her friends. The 



THE GOVERNMENT OF YOUTH 217 

mother complains because she does not spend 
enough time in the house. They do not '*bawl 
her out" in any of her societies, and naturally 
she likes to be there. Nature has made us all so 
that we dislike to be with persons who insult us 
and keep pointing out our real or supposed faults. 

The mother does very little in the house her- 
self; she does not have time for it, for she is ''in 
society"; and besides she dislikes housework. 
She says she cannot stand it. She has never 
really taught her daughter to do anything in the 
house. She commands her to do this and that, but 
she rarely does anything with her. When they 
do try to work together the mother ^s voice is 
often heard prophesying that the girl will come 
to disaster if she cannot do tasks better than she 
has been doing them. The girl has rarely per- 
formed any household tasks with the mother with- 
out being "bawled out" and made self-conscious 
and ill-at-ease. 

How the mother expected the girl would learn 
without being taught is a mystery; and more 
mysterious still is the mother's feeling that the 
girl ought to like tasks, all of her associations 
with which have been unpleasant because of the 
mother's fault-finding and nagging. Needless to 
say, the mother does not realize that she is harsh 
or unwise. She is just following out her natural 
tendency to complain because her daughter cannot 
do as well as she can in the kitchen or elsewhere 



218 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

in the house. Inquiry reveals the fact that the 
mother in her girlhood was not any more inter- 
ested in household duties, or any more skillful in 
the performance of them, than her daughter is 
now; but the mother has forgotten about this, of 
course. True to human nature, she judges the 
girl by her own present interests and achieve- 
ments. Also she overlooks all the daughter's out- 
side connections, accomplishments and duties. 
The daughter has vastly more intellectual ability 
than the mother, and can succeed in situations 
where the mother would fail miserably, but no 
account is taken of all this. 

Government by Cooperation. — Here is another 
case. Mrs. B. is the mother of four children, two 
boys and two girls. The oldest, a girl, is now a 
senior in college. Mrs. B's family are living 
in more modest circumstances than Mrs. A. 's. 
Mrs. B. is not ''in society" to any such extent as 
Mrs. A., and she is not as ambitious for social 
prestige. But her daughter is as accomplished as 
Mrs. A.'s daughter. She, too, is a leader among 
her classmates, and a general favorite in her col- 
lege. She is also a favorite at home. All the 
members of her family are delighted when she is 
with them. They are spoken of in the neighbor- 
hood as a happy family, even though they have to 
live in a rather restricted way. 

Miss B. likes household duties better than does 
Miss A. Mrs. B. says that if she should be taken 



THE GOVERNMENT OF YOUTH 219 

away any day her daughter could ''run the 
house" perfectly. Visitors to Mrs. B.'s home 
sometimes comment on the joyous sounds that 
come from the kitchen. The mother and daughter 
are having a jolly time there, — they are good 
fellows together. Unlike Mrs. A., Mrs. B. praises 
her daughter constantly for her swiftness and 
cleverness in getting up dishes and for her artis- 
tic sense in setting the table and arranging the 
articles in the house. Mrs. B. never "bawls out" 
her daughter while Mrs. A. does not follow any 
other plan. The results are apparent in the dif- 
ference between Miss B. and Miss A. in their 
ability and interest in the work of the home. 



CHAPTER VIII 

QUESTIONS FREQUENTLY ASKED BY 
PARENTS AND TEACHERS 

First Question: When Does Puberty Begin 
With Boys and With Girls? — Those who are 
studying the development of the young distin- 
guish between chronological age and physiological 
age. People generally have chronological age in 
mind when they speak of the age of an individual ; 
if they say he is fifteen years old they mean he 
has lived fifteen years. But by physiological age 
is meant the degree of development which the in- 
dividual has attained, and especially whether he 
has entered, is completing or has completed the 
pubertal period. A boy might have lived seven- 
teen years but not have reached a stage of de- 
velopment beyond the thirteenth or fourteenth 
year. On the other hand, he might have a chrono- 
logical age of thirteen years but have reached the 
stage of development usually attained at the age 
of seventeen. 

Take a thousand boys ten years of age chosen 
at random and they will differ in the age at which 
puberty will begin. While their chronological age 

220 



QUESTIONS FREQUENTLY ASKED 221 

is the same, physiological age of the extremes 
may differ as much as four years. The majority 
of them will be just entering the pubertal period 
by the time they are thirteen and a half years of 
age, but about one-fifth of them will not yet have 
entered it, while two-fifths of them will have 
passed through the early stages of puberty. Of 
the thousand boys two or three of them will not 
have entered the period until the seventeenth year 
while fifty of them will have entered it before 
their thirteenth year. 

Girls are about two years ahead of boys in their 
pubescent development. Take a thousand girls 
chosen at random and five of them will have en- 
tered puberty by the eleventh year. The majority 
of them will have entered it before they are 
thirteen, but there will be a few laggards. The 
girls vary among themselves with respect to 
physiological age in relation to chronological age 
as much as the boys do. Among one thousand 
girls chosen at random there will be a variation 
between the extremes of five or six years in the 
age at which the pubertal period will be entered 
and completed. 

It is important for parents and teachers to dis- 
tinguish between the chronological and the 
physiological age. The latter is in every respect 
the more important to be taken account of in the 
teaching and training of both boys and girls. 
Chronological age is significant only as it gives 



222 THE TREND OP THE TEENS 

a general clue to physiological epochs. We may 
expect that the majority of boys will have begun 
the maturing process between their thirteenth and 
fourteenth chronological year; but it should be 
kept constantly in mind that a boy may have com- 
pleted the maturing process by fourteen or he 
may not yet have entered it. 

Immature, maturing and mature boys ought not 
to be kept in the same class, for they should not 
be taught or disciplined in the same way. This is 
equally true of girls. Immature boys and girls 
have very different interests and points of view 
from pubsecent boys and girls or from those who 
have passed through the maturing process and 
have reached physiological maturity. When the 
pubescent epoch is reached by either the boy or 
the girl all the vitalities are quickened. The 
individual increases rapidly in height and weight. 
The amplitude of respiration is greatly increased. 
Resistance to fatal diseases is strengthened, and 
in every essential respect the individual enters 
upon a sort of new life. Before he reaches this 
period he is individualistic; after he enters it he 
tends to become social. Before puberty he desires 
only to have a good time; but when he becomes 
pubescent he begins to think of winning a live- 
lihood, of making his own way, of establishing a 
home. The chief phenomenon of this epoch is the 
appearance of the tender passion, which does not 
play a prominent role before the pubertal period 



QUESTIONS FREQUENTLY ASKED 223 

is entered but which will play the leading role 
throughout life thereafter until decline begins in 
old age. 

Second Question: Why Are Young People So 
Restless Between the Fourteenth and Sixteenth 
Years? — There are two reasons for this restless- 
ness. In the first place, the growth in height is 
normally exceedingly rapid at this time, especially 
in the case of boys. The most rapid period of 
growth for girls is between the twelfth and four- 
teenth years. Now, when an individual is increas- 
ing in height rapidly it means, of course, that the 
bones are lengthening with unusual rapidity. As 
a matter of fact, the typical boy adds as much in 
height in one year between fourteen and sixteen 
as he does in three years before this period is 
reached or three years after it is completed. 
There are exceptions to this rule; but take a 
thousand boys chosen at random and eighty-five 
per cent, of them will achieve very rapid increase 
in height between fourteen and sixteen due to the 
rapid extension of the bones. 

When the bones increase in length very rapidly 
the individual is apt to suffer to some extent from 
muscular tension; and when he feels muscular 
tension he will be restless in the sense that he will 
be moving about incessantly. This is the chief 
reason why it is almost impossible to keep the 
young, boys especially, sitting in seats for long 
periods at a time between the ages of fourteen 



224 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

and sixteen. They will feel ill-at-ease unless they 
can move about freely. As a rule, the more 
they are scolded on account of restlessness the 
more restless they become, because upbraiding 
serves mainly to augment the tension produced by 
normal growth. 

The reader may be helped to appreciate this 
point if he will observe adults when their muscles 
become tense, as when they sit at a lecture un- 
interruptedly for a couple of hours. They can- 
not resist the impulse to move about to release 
the tension which long sitting develops. They 
will not be aware that they are restless ; they will 
unconsciously change their position for the pur- 
pose of relieving the set of the muscles. Even in 
church an audience that has been listening to a 
sermon for a long time will become restless 
though the people may wish to be quiet and re- 
spectful. In the same way boys who are shooting 
upward rapidly may wish to sit still in school 
and also in the home, but impulsively they will 
move about constantly in the hope thus to relieve 
the tension which normal growth produces during 
the crucial age. 

Teachers and parents sometimes try to compel 
boys and girls who are restless to sit still for 
hours at a time. A much better way would be to 
provide frequent opportunities for change of 
position and for relaxation. Pupils should not be 
required to remain in a sitting position for longer 



QUESTIONS FREQUENTLY ASKED 225 

tlian twenty or twenty-five minutes at a time dur- 
ing the rapidly growing period. After twenty 
minutes of study or recitation they should have 
five or ten minutes of relaxation, which should 
consist in muscular activities, preferably competi- 
tive games and plays. 

Third Question : Why A re Young People in the 
Early Teens So Careless About Their Health? — 
Nature floods the organism of boys and girls in 
the early teens with a superabundance of energy. 
They feel they can endure everything and resist 
all disease. It is difficult to convince them in this 
age that they will ever be sick or incapacitated. 
They are dominated by the impulse to accomplish 
things and not to protect their health. At this 
age boys and girls do not think of themselves 
from the standpoint of health; they think only 
of winning in competitive games, or gaining 
favors from the opposite sex, or securing applause 
for their heroic or superhuman deeds. The girl 
thinks much more about her looks than about how 
she can preserve her health. 

It seems impossible to make young people take 
care of their health unless they can be led to see 
very concretely that good health will enable them 
to achieve more than they otherwise could do, or 
that it is essential to the attainment of good looks 
and an attractive personality. If a girl can be 
made to believe that when she goes out in wet 
weather with thin-soled shoes she will lose her 



226 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

color or the brightness of her eyes, or she will 
suffer from other disadvantages in respect to 
appearance she may be induced to wear rubbers 
or thick-soled shoes, even if it is not the fashion 
among her associates so to do. In the same way, 
if a boy can be shown that when he throws him- 
self on the ground after having become over- 
heated in a race he will lose his wind or his heart 
may go back on him at a crucial moment, he will 
be inclined to be cautious about taking chances 
with his health in the future. 

Fourth Question: Why Are Young Persons, 
Boys Especially, So Indifferent to Cleanlinessf — 
One of the most important facts concerning the 
development of the individual relates to his indif- 
ference or even resistance at one period in his 
career to certain influences exerted by the en- 
vironment, while at another period he may be 
very responsive to these same influences. Clean- 
liness furnishes a good illustration. During the 
early years a boy is wholly indifferent to requests 
made by parents and teachers to keep his hands 
or face or any other part of his body or his 
clothing free from soil. Much of the effort of 
parents during the first twelve or thirteen years 
of the boy's career is spent in trying to develop in 
him an abhorrence of soil on his person, but all 
the parent's exhortation during these early years 
usually accomplishes little or nothing. The boy 
is not only instructed to keep clean, but he sees 



QUESTIONS FREQUENTLY ASKED 227 

all the older people around him making every 
effort to keep clean. He hears persons commend 
cleanliness and he reads about the importance of 
being cleanly, but there seems to be no impulse 
within him which will respond to all these in- 
fluences. He is dominated by the passion to dig 
and roll in the dirt and handle unclean objects 
regardless of their effect upon his hands or face 
or clothing. He prefers a mud puddle to a parlor. 
He apparently enjoys the sensation of soil on his 
skin and he often smears his body with it. 

But after the boy passes his thirteenth birth- 
day he begins to be responsive to suggestions re- 
lating to cleanliness. The girl responds several 
years earlier than the boy. But before the latter 
completes the pubertal period he normally be- 
comes very sensitive to the effect of the objects 
with which he comes in contact upon his person. 
He will take pains at fifteen or sixteen to remove 
soil from his hands and his face and he will try 
to keep his clothing clean. Often he will go to 
as great extremes at seventeen in trying to be 
cleanly as he went in the other direction when he 
was ten. 

Primitive man ignored the effects of soil on his 
person. His survival depended upon his cultivat- 
ing indifference to experience with dirt. He was 
close to the soil and was in some measure a part 
of it. But with the increase of intelligence in 
racial development, man became more and more 



228 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

detached from and independent of the soil, and he 
finally reached the place where he came to abhor 
soil. Hygienic and esthetic sensitiveness led 
man in time to try to remove all traces of soil 
from his body and his clothing. We have reached 
the point where uncleanliness is exceedingly dis- 
tressing to all adults whose livelihood does not 
depend upon close contact with the soil. But as 
this is the last stage reached in the development 
of mankind so it is the last stage attained in the 
development of the individual. 

A young boy will forsake the most elaborately 
and beautifully equipped house for a sandpile. 
Hour after hour he will dig in the sand. He 
greatly enjoys the sensations of handling the 
sand, of burying his feet in it, or shovelling it 
from one place to another in a sand pile, of con- 
structing hills and valleys in it, and so on. He 
will endure great physical discomfort from being 
wet and cold in order that he may gratify this 
l)assion to manipulate sand. But when he passes 
his twelfth birthday this passion begins to lose its 
hold on him, and when he gets well into the teens 
he will forsake it completely except that on ac- 
casion he may go to the seashore and play in the 
sand. 

Fifth Question: How Can One Control the 
Unhealthful Eating Habits of the Young? — The 
majority of pupils in the grammar and high 
school bolt their food. A large number of testi- 



QUESTIONS FREQUENTLY ASKED 229 

monies have been gained from pupils who say 
that they do not devote more than fifteen minutes 
to any meal. In a certain college the students 
live in individual houses; there are no dormi- 
tories. Some of them have to go considerable 
distances to their recitation halls and labora- 
tories. Most of the students have their first 
classes each day at eight o'clock in the morning. 
The majority of them have testified that they 
allow from five to ten minutes for breakfast. As 
a rule they eat a dish of mush of some kind, some- 
times an egg, usually fried, and also fried ham 
or bacon and griddle cakes. All food is washed 
down with coffee. Then they rush for their 
classes. Their instructors say that some of them 
might as well remain at home — they accomplish 
little or nothing in their classes, probably because 
the digestive system is engaged in a heroic 
struggle with the half-cooked or badly-cooked 
food which has been shoveled in, and flooded past 
the masticating apparatus and digestive fer- 
ments. 

Then at noon the students are again in a hurry. 
They must go to their boarding places and return 
for early afternoon classes. Some of them are 
under nervous excitement when they begin eating, 
and they continue under it until they are through. 
They over-eat, considering the fact that they are 
in no fit condition to take care of food. The 
organism cannot properly digest or assimilate 



230 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

food under nervous strain and stress. The result 
is lessened vitality, and in the end the nervous 
and digestive systems revolt and the student com- 
plains of ''dyspepsia." To relieve his distress he 
is apt to take some digestive panacea which 
further overtaxes a system which is already 
heavily burdened. 

Definite Period Should Be Assigned for Meals. 
— Parents who have their children in their own 
homes should be able to control this matter to 
some extent. A program should be worked out so 
that a child will have at least twenty minutes for 
his breakfast, and still be able to reach school in 
time for his first class without going there on a 
dead run. He should feel when he sits down to 
the breakfast table that he is not under terrific 
strain, — that if he does not bolt his food he will 
be late at school and be penalized. It would be 
better for him to go off to school without any 
breakfast than to take it under conditions of 
great nervous excitement. At noon no food 
should be taken until nervous tension has been 
released. 

Often pupils are famished when they reach 
home. At the same time they are in an excitable 
state. The best thing for them to do would be to 
take a glass of warm milk or malted milk, or if 
milk is not enjoyed, then to eat an apple. Any of 
these will satisfy for the moment, and will help 
the organism to regain composure so that when 



QUESTIONS FREQUENTLY ASKED 231 

heavier food is taken the digestive system will be 
in a condition to cope with it. 

The Danger of Over-Eating. — The chief dif- 
ficulty to be avoided in the case of pupils who are 
tense from the day's work is over-eating, espe- 
cially of foods like meat, beans, cheese. There 
would not be much danger of a pupil eating too 
much ripe fruit, or zwieback, or well-cooked vege- 
tables. These foods are "filling" and satisfying, 
and are more easily disposed of by an organism 
under stress and strain than are the concentrated 
albuminous foods. 

Of course, the best way to solve this problem is 
to arrange the program of a pupil so that he will 
not feel nervous strain when he is at the table. 
When a number of children eat together they are 
urged instinctively to hurry for fear they will not 
get enough to eat. If one will notice animals of 
any kind eating, he will find each one gorging be- 
cause it fears instinctively that if it does not 
gorge it may get nothing. Something of the same 
sort of instinct controls young people, and to 
some extent even older people, when many eat 
together. This instinct to gorge food is the cause 
of a good deal of mischief in boarding schools 
where four or five hundred pupils take their food 
in the same mess hall. They often make way with 
an enormous amount of food in ten or fifteen 
minutes when they shoukl have spent half or 
three-quarters of an hour in the process. But 



232 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

their instincts say to them: "Gobble your food 
as hastily as you can, so that you will get enough. 
Everybody around you is on the look-out and 
may eat your allowance unless you put it inside 
you in a hurry. ' ' Those who manage dining halls 
for large numbers of pupils should make the 
rule that no one can leave the table for a half 
hour, say, after a meal has begun. There should 
be talks which would make the pupils conscious 
of their impulsive tendencies and which would 
help them to develop restraint and poise; or in 
other words to make them mannerly at table. 

Sixth Question: How Can We Help Children 
to Choose Their Occupation? — During the past 
few years students of childhood have been trying 
to find out how early children begin to think about 
their life work, and what they would like to do 
when grown up if they could have their choice, 
and why. Testimonies have been gained from 
hundreds of thousands of children in cities and 
in the country. The home and school conditions 
of these children have all been noted and con- 
sidered in connection with their choice of occupa- 
tions. 

While choices for any given age vary to some 
extent according to locality, economic conditions, 
vocation of parents, and the like, still there is a 
significant uniformity among all children studied. 
About forty per cent, of the girls of all ages 
would prefer to be teachers above everything else. 



QUESTIONS FREQUENTLY ASKED 233 

In giving their reasons they say teaching is ' ' nice 
, work"; it is not as ''hard as doing house- work"; 
"one can do so much good by being a teacher"; 
''teaching is a good work for a woman"; and 
so on. 

Not more than fifteen per cent, of the girls 
would prefer to be wives, housekeepers and cooks. 
A slightly larger proportion say they would like 
to do millinery work or dressmaking, or sei've as 
telephone or telegraph operators, stenographers 
or bookkeepers. One per cent, would like to be 
doctors or nurses, twelve per cent, actresses or 
musicians; and two per cent, have ambitions to 
become authors or inventors. 

The choices of the boys are different from those 
of the girls. Only three per cent, regard teaching 
as a desirable business. The largest number 
would prefer to engage in commercial work in 
which they could "make a good deal of money." 
Engineering appeals strongly to boys, while farm- 
ing is not attractive. Fifteen per cent, would like 
to be doctors, while only about half as many 
decide in favor of the law. Ten per cent, choose 
the life of a soldier or sailor or police captain. 
Only one per cent, would like to go on the stage 
or be musicians or orators. 

The reasons given by boys for the choice of an 
occupation refer very largely either to the making 
of money or to doing some big, heroic and dif- 
ficult task, such as performing a delicate opera- 



234 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

tion on the human body or building a great rail- 
way. The boys who are captivated by the army 
or navy want an opportunity to show their cour- 
age and daring, and the same motive is at the 
bottom of their desire to be policemen. 

Are Children Influenced By Their Parents* 
Occupations? — Investigators have attempted to 
determine to what extent children's choices are 
influenced by the occupations of their parents. 
The younger the child the more likely he is to be 
so influenced. There is an exception to this, how- 
ever, in the case of young girls, who are not 
attracted by housekeeping. The life of the school 
teacher seems much more inviting than that of 
the mother. The reason probably is that the child 
sees the teacher at her best and the mother often 
at her worst. There are so many conspicuous 
irritations in keeping a house that even a young 
girl is apt to acquire a distaste for it. The 
teacher, the actress, the nurse, the stenographer, 
the telephone operator, and the clerk in the dry- 
goods store are better dressed than the mother 
in the kitchen, and they appear to have a better 
time. So their work makes a stronger impres- 
sion on the girl than does the mother's work. 

We are hearing much these days in favor of 
training girls to become housekeepers ; but unless 
they can be made interested in it in their younger 
years it will probably be impossible to impress 
them favorably with it by any amount of urging 



QUESTIONS FREQUENTLY ASKED 235 

after they reach the teens. If the duties involved 
in making a home are evidently disagxeeable and 
circumscribing, then the theoretical teaching of 
the school will probably not count for much in 
the way of leading girls to wish to cast their lot 
in the direction of keeping a house. 

In order that homemaking may become attract- 
ive there must seem to be some romance about it. 
No normal person will deliberately chose a calling 
which appears to have little but commonplace 
drudgery in it. A teacher may talk to girls until 
she is black in the face about the delights of mak- 
ing a home without producing any effect upon 
them, if in their actual contact with housekeeping 
they are impressed only with its dull, heavy, mo- 
nontonus routine. This is undoubtedly the chief 
reason why such a small proportion of girls who 
have indicated their choice of occupation suggest 
homemaking. 

There is a similar situation in respect to the 
boy's choice of occupation. We are hearing it 
said on every side to-day that we should teach 
boys in the country to stay on the farm. Lectur- 
ers go around among the schools and tell the boys 
what a delightful life a farmer has. They dwell 
upon the beauty of the country, the freedom of 
thought and action which the farmer enjoys, and 
the healthfulness of tilling the soil. But when the 
boys are at home they are conscious mainly of 
the farmer's struggle to make a living. They 



236 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

hear principally about hard times, and they are 
constantly exhorted to be economical. Actual, 
concrete experience of this sort will offset any 
ideal picture of farming which lecturers give in 
schoolhouses. 

One thing we can count on; the boy will 
choose an occupation in which he thinks he will 
have some adventure. He will avoid if he can 
any kind of work which he thinks will hold him 
down to mere routine. If farming cannot be made 
romantic to some degree, the majority of the boys 
on the farm will not choose it as an occupation; 
this is certain. 

A Child's Views Change As He Develops. — A 
very young child's views of a desirable vocation 
are not to be regarded with great seriousness, of 
course. As he grows older his desires are likely 
to change. Investigators have collected many 
testimonies from adults showing that during the 
period from five to twenty their choice of what 
they would like to do changed several times, 
though in a number of cases men became inter- 
ested very early in music, or in mechanics, or in 
engineering, or in some branch of business, and 
they maintained this interest throughout child- 
hood and youth and into mature life. 

But it must be expected that the interests of the 
majority of young people will change somewhat 
according as their range of observation and ex- 
perience enlarges. And it is highly desirable that 



QUESTIONS FREQUENTLY ASKED 237 

the child and the youth should be given as gen- 
erous an opportunity as possible to learn the 
characteristics of and the requirements for va- 
rious kinds of work and different professions. A 
youth should not settle too early upon his life 
work. He should be given a chance to test him- 
self in a variety of vocations. The parent and 
the teacher should study his temperament, his 
special abilities, his tastes, his physical condition ; 
and with data gained in this way it should be pos- 
sible to advise a boy seventeen or eighteen years 
of age so that he could chose a vocation or a pro- 
fession with far greater success than he could 
have done at eleven or twelve. 

Fortunately, the schools everywhere are giving 
attention to vocational guidance. There should 
be a vocational adviser in every progressive 
school to-day. It should be the duty of this 
adviser to study all the opportunities for boys 
and girls in the locality in which the school is 
situated. He should then study carefully the boys 
and girls who are about to leave either the 
elementary school or the high school. He should 
have a record of their work, their conduct and 
their health during the whole school course. He 
should, by personal observation and by tests so 
far as possible, learn the characteristics of the 
boys and girls who are about to begin their life 
work ; and after consultation with the parents, he 
should then be able to advise them intelligently 



238 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

regarding a vocation or profession. Tliis is pre- 
cisely what is being undertaken in the more pro- 
gressive communities to-day, and it ought to be 
undertaken in every community. 

Seventh Question : Why Does Manual Training 
in School Have Such Slight Influence on the Use- 
fulness of Boys Around the Home? — Mainly be- 
cause the work in manual training in the school 
often has little or no relation to the work that is 
constantly needing to be done about a home. In 
some schools pupils never make any useful thing; 
they merely learn to use tools in a formal way 
and so they take no interest and acquire no skill 
in making furniture for the home or repairing 
worn or broken articles. What pupils do in 
school largely determines what they will be inter- 
ested in doing outside of school. 

But some schools are adopting a program in 
manual training work which is designed to make 
pupils useful in their homes. A survey of the 
articles made by 757 pupils in a small western 
citj^ showed the following results, — every article 
counted could actually be used: 

Fifth Grade. Sixth Grade 

209 (Playground) 218 (Playground) 

51 (Workshop) 79 (Workshop) 

447 (Home) 637 (Home) 



QUESTIONS FREQUENTLY ASKED 239 

Seventh Grade Eighth Grade 

222 (Playground) 323 (Playground) 

59 (Workshop) 47 (Workshop) 

1034 (Home) 1178 (Home) 

10 (Schoolroom) 82 (Schoolroom) 

The following lists indicate the character of 
the articles made in each grade : 

Fifth Grade. — Toy chair, gate, bread-board, 
wagon, birdstick, stepladder, guns, sword, shield, 
door-mat, fence, toy furniture, boat, fence, bird- 
cage, sling-shot, bow and arrow, sword and case, 
shack, picture frame, rabbit pen, grater, salt box, 
wind-mill, test-tube holder, picture frame, paper 
rack, sail boat, ice boat, nursery furniture, table, 
chair, Christmas tree stand, raft, button box, 
hammer handle, moving picture machine (toy), 
wheelbarrow, wooden gun, wooden shovel. 

Sixth Grade. — Grater, spear, guns, sword, boat, 
wagon, fence, bird-stick, shack, flag-pole, card 
holder, book holder, weather vane, wind-mill, 
bread-board, necktie holder, bow and arrow, dog 
cart, postcard holder, book rack, knitting needles, 
magazine rack, small chair, bean blower, sub- 
marine, tanks, British tank, armoured car, coal 
bin, sail boat, pier, music stand, porch box, marble 
box, toy gun, boat, sling-shot, rabbit coop, tie rack, 
ink stand, cart, picture frame, horse manger, 
clothes stick, bicycle stand, animal cage, line reel, 
medicine chest. 



240 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

Seventh Grade. — Bread-board, fence, bench, 
shack, flower box, necktie rack, cart, launches, 
sailboats, swords, shoe-shining box, magazine 
rack, watch stand, wheelbarrow, candle holder, 
key holders, ice boats, chicken house, bow and 
arrow, bobs, wagons, sparrow traps, fly-catcher- 
house, magazine rack, ash sifter, halltree. 

Eighth Grade. — Umbrella rack, bread-board, 
piano bench, fence, camp chairs, calf pen and 
fence, cedar chest, rat trap, halltree, wind-mill, 
tie rack, grater, step ladder, camp stool, costumer, 
bench hook, shack, rattle boxes, big boat, tooth- 
brush rack, flag pole, ladder, platform, wagon, 
push cart, auto, rustic bench, tennis stand, ice- 
cream counter, window stick, ice boat, play house, 
fish line holder, washing benches, shoe blacking 
box, wind-mill, telephone stand, magazine rack, 
rope winder, cart, milk stool, board fence, circus 
pole for school, lamp, bird stick. 

Making Repairs. — A considerable part of the 
manual training of these 757 pupils has to do 
with making repairs. The following table indi- 
cates the number who made bona fide repairs on 
the articles mentioned during the first five months 
of the school year: 

Eepairs to : 

Windows 164 

Doors 230 

Furniture 255 

Chairs 118 



QUESTIONS FREQUENTLY ASKED 241 

Screens Ill 

Shelves 20 

Sidewalks, Porches, Floors, Railings 

and Steps 212 

Roofs 22 

Autos, Bicycles, Motorcycles 58 

Plumbing 24 

Painting, Varnishing, Refinishing 23 

Chicken Coop, Rabbit Hutches 80 

Fences, Gates 77 

Coal Bins, Wood Sheds, Houses, Garages .... 68 

Toys, Wagons, Sleds, Boats, Scooters 93 

Electrical Apparatus 4 

Shoes 11 

Making Money. — The motive back of the ef- 
forts of most adults relates to the making of 
money. Pupils in the higher grades may very 
properly have the making of money in view as an 
outcome of their mastery of manual arts. When 
a pupil realizes that he can make an article for 
which he can obtain money in the market, he is 
incited to learn all the processes necessary to 
succeed in his task. Money reward is one form 
of concrete evidence that a pupil has done his 
work up to standard. The following testimonies 
from some of the 757 pupils mentioned above 
show that their manual training had equipped 
them to perform tasks that need to be done in 
every-day life: 



242 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

*'I learned to use tools with which I earned 
$5.50." 

''I earned a dollar a day for lathing a house. 
Manual training helped me to do that lathing." 

''When I repaired the steps in the back yard I 
earned twenty-five cents from my brother-in- 
law." 

''I have earned money in carpenter work." 

"I make small chicken houses and sell them 
for $1.00. I made part of a side walk." 

'*I built a sidewalk and got paid for it. Manual 
training helped me to use tools." 

'*! built a poultry house and was paid for it. 
I repaired a sidewalk and was paid for it." 

''I helped shingle a roof and earned $1.00." 

'*! sold $2.50 worth of manual training prod- 
ucts." 

''I solda joint for $2.00." 

"I have learned to make fern stands very well 
and have sold them at $1.00 each." 

"I earned $2.00 for helping to build a garage." 

''My father pays me $1.00 a week for what I do 
around the house. He first paid me fifty cents, 
but I am handier since I took manual training. I 
made a runway for ashes which enabled me to do 
more work." 

"I made a snow scraper and a fish sled, and 
earned a lot of money." 

"I lathed all last summer. I made bread- 
boards and wind mills and sold them. I sold bird 



QUESTIONS FREQUENTLY ASKED 243 

houses, repaired drawers and table legs, made hod 
handles for plasterers, a mitre box and rifle 
stocks." 

*^I repaired bicycles, tables, wagons, chairs, 
steps, railings, made bread-boards and foot-stool. 
I did electric wiring and made boxes, weather- 
vanes, mailbox and mitre box. I stained and 
varnished articles." 

''I made a carrier for my wheat, a taboret for 
a neighbor, a dog-house for my aunt, pen holders 
for the druggist," 

'*I have learned to make joints, which has 
helped me in making a scaffold for my father to 
use in his business. He pays me for build- 
ing it." 

^'I made a wagon to sell fish, and put hinges on 
a door." 

''I planed windows." 

^'I have helped screen in a porch, fitted storm 
windows, painted a porch, helped paint a barn." 

'*I repaired shelves in a store." 

''I have made an ash-sifter." 

''I learned to get things square and to saw 
straight, chisel and mark gauge, I have earned 
money making boxes to send medicine in." 

''I helped make a summer house." 

*'I helped build a rabbit house and was paid 
for it." 

^'I made boxes for St, Mary's hospital," 

'*I helped a neighbor erect a vine climber." 



244 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

**I helped a carpenter board a house." 

"I helped make a door through a barn wall." 

**I put a box on my scootmobile." 

"I fixed my rabbit coop and made it warmer 
and kept the young hares from freezing. They 
grew hearty and I sold them for a good price. ' ' 

*'I built a chicken coop for myself and got 
money from the eggs. I sold kites that I made, 
and got a Bed Cross membership by making 
knitting needles." 

**I made kites, built bird houses, and made 
knitting needles which I sold." 

''I have learned something of manual training 
so that I can be a carpenter when I am big. I 
have been working for men, helping them to board 
the house. I have worked on a barn." 

'*I made a fence for my neighbor." 

*'I made a trough and sold it." 

'*I sold my marble box to a boy to keep his 
marbles in." 

''I made a picture frame and sold it, repaired 
a railing and made some money." 

''I make match scratchers and sell them." 

"I have learned to make small stools to hold 
plants, and a box to let pet animals sleep in and 
have sold them." 

Eighth Question: How Can We Control Profes- 
sional Athletics in Schools? — High schools and 
colleges universally condemn professionalism in 
athletics. They will not permit a boy to play on 



QUESTIONS FREQUENTLY ASKED 245 

a team if he has violated any rule directed against 
professionalism. If he should play a game of 
baseball with a professional team, say, he would be 
debarred from taking part in any contests in his 
high school or college. It is thought that in this 
way athletics in high school and college can be 
kept free from commercialism, so that games will 
be played for the sake of sport, and not for ma- 
terial gain. But this worthy aim is not realized 
in many high schools and colleges. The football, 
basketball, and baseball teams which engage in 
inter-academic and inter-collegiate contests are as 
professional in some ways as any out-and-out 
professional teams. The chief diiference between 
them is that in the latter case the player re- 
ceives the pay for his services, while in the 
former the school is the beneficiary. In many 
schools a big fee is charged for admission to any 
contest, and large sums are obtained in this way. 
School and college teams do not, as a rule, play 
football or basketball or baseball for the sake of 
sport merely. They play for glory and for the 
gate receipts. Most of the funds set aside for 
physical training in high schools and colleges is 
spent on the few people who get on the team. 
High-priced coaches give all their time to a hand- 
ful of men who are, as a rule, over-trained. 

A few voices are being raised throughout the 
country in protest against this abuse of sport in 
educational institutions. In some places high 



246 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

schools and. colleges are built largely around their 
teams, and all the other activities of the institu- 
tions are at a low ebb. The readers of this 
volume could do a service to education if they 
would put a damper in their various commu- 
nities on inter-academic and inter-collegiate con- 
tests. Of course, one high school or one college 
cannot act independently of the others in its ter- 
ritory. Fortunately there is a movement now 
under way which may lessen the importance at- 
tached to competition between different institu- 
tions and awaken an interest in contests between 
classes and societies within an institution. We 
need to give more attention to inside athletics 
instead of concentrating everything on outside 
contests. Every pupil in a high school or college 
should be a member of some team. The money 
which can be devoted to physical education should 
be spent mainly on the great body of students, 
and not on contesting teams. Some day we will 
look back curiously on our present practise of 
assigning high-paid instructors to over-train a 
dozen or two men while the mass of students is 
left without any or with only inferior instruction. 
We will look back with amazement on our plan 
of giving up a school gymnasium to a few men 
who are training for the teams and keeping most 
of the students out of it, and letting them go 
without any physical training or at best with 
only a half hour a week. But the thing that will 



QUESTIONS FREQUENTLY ASKED 247 

seem most inexplicable of all to us when we look 
back a few years hence is our practise of elimi- 
nating from teams all students except those who 
are best developed and who need training the 
least and spending our time and resources on 
them, while we let those go without training who 
are poorly developed and who are most in need 
of it. 

Ninth Question: Shall I Send My Boy To a 
Military School? — Most of a boy's daily program 
in a military school is regulated by a fixed 
schedule. He rises in the morning at six o'clock 
or thereabouts when reveille is sounded. He is 
given from three to five minutes to dress. At the 
end of this time, he must respond to roll call 
either for drill exercises or for some kind of 
gymnastics. After his exercise he takes a cold 
spray. He is given five minutes or so to get into 
his uniform. He probably then will have some 
more drill, after which he will march to break- 
fast. He will stand at his place at table until he 
is commanded to be seated. He will come to 
attention upon command, and he will listen to the 
orders for the day. He will rise from the table 
upon command, and will march out in order. He 
will then probably be given ten or fifteen minutes 
of freedom, at the end of which time he will 
fall into line and march to the classroom, and will 
be seated upon command. At the conclusion of 
the recitation he will rise upon command and will 



248 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

marcli to his next class or his next duty. And so 
he goes on until taps are sounded at 9 :30 at night 
when his lights must go out. He may have one or 
two hours during the day when he will be at lei- 
sure to go about the grounds informally, but dur- 
ing the rest of his time he will be governed by the 
routine orders. 

The Military Regimen. — Under a military 
regime everything must be done exactly on time 
and according to fixed standards. The uniforms 
must all be clean, every button must be in place, 
and the clothes must fit the cadet acceptably 
according to the military style. The hands and 
face must be clean, the hair combed, the shoes 
brushed, the linen must be immaculate. If there 
is any neglect or deficiency in these respects a 
definite penalty is assigned. No cadet ever ''talks 
back" in regard to any of these matters; the 
superior ofiScer decides without debate whether 
or not a cadet has conformed to the requirements. 
If the cadet is ten seconds behind time at any 
exercise; if he shows the slightest discourtesy 
toward any officer; if he becomes negligent or 
indifferent either in the classroom or in his mili- 
tary exercises, he is detected and penalized. He 
cannot interfere with the rights or activities of 
any other cadet or he will suffer for it. If he 
thinks he has been dealt with unjustly by an 
officer, he may appeal to a higher officer, and his 
case mav be heard. But it is a fundamental mili- 



QUESTIONS FREQUENTLY ASKED 249 

tary principle that any cadet is under the control 
of his immediate superior. 

Would this sort of regimen be beneficial for 
boys in the public schools who take liberties with 
their teachers; who are tardy and absent from 
their work a good deal; who show disrespect for 
teachers as far as they dare to; who ''talk back" 
when they are criticized for misconduct, and so 
on 1 Yes, such boys would be immensely benefited 
by a military training. To be brought under a 
regime of fair, just discipline from which there 
is no possible escape is just what such boys need. 
They must conform or take the consequences. 
The typical boy in a modern home may argue for 
half an hour with his parents before getting out 
of bed. He may start five minutes late to school 
day after day. He may fail to spend any time 
in studying his lessons out-of-school hours. His 
parents may ask him to do this or that, and what 
they say may pass in one ear and out the other 
without producing any effect on his behavior. 
The number of such boys is increasing in modern 
life, unfortunately. 

Bops Should Learn to Conform to Reasonable 
Rules. — The best thing that can happen to a boy 
is to get into the habit early of conforming read- 
ily and without question to the rules and regula- 
tions of the home and the school. Unless he does 
this, he will keep everybody around him in hot 
water much of the time, and he will be unhappy 



250 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

himself because lie will be nagged and censured. 
A non-conformist in home or school cannot avoid 
coming constantly into conflict with persons in 
authority, and when this habit becomes fixed, it 
will keep its possessor in a kind of antagonistic 
and belligerent attitude toward those about him. 
You will never find a boy like this and also find 
that he is a really cheerful, good-natured and 
agreeable fellow. 

Of course, proper training would usually pre- 
vent a boy from developing such a disposition. 
But the conditions in modern life often make it 
difficult to bring up a child so that he will readily 
and joyfully adapt himself to the necessary rules 
and regulations of home and school, and arrange 
his daily program in accordance therewith. For 
this reason the military school becomes a neces- 
sity for many boys. It is a rigorous regime, and 
many parents are too tender to subject their boys 
to it, and so they let them go on disobedient, dis- 
respectful, and tantalizing until they become a 
nuisance to themselves and an irritation to others. 
Taking a boy's entire life into account, it would 
be much better for him to be under rigid dis- 
cipline for four or five years and learn to conform 
to necessary authority rather than to go on enjoy- 
ing his freedom, which in his case amounts to 
license, until he arouses the hostility and ani- 
mosity of everyone around him. 

It would not do to have the typical boy spend 



QUESTIONS FREQUENTLY ASKED 251 

his whole life under a military regimen. When the 
time comes that the home and the school will co- 
operate to train children in good habits so that 
they must be sensitive to and respectful of au- 
thority, and so that they will not be trying to 
*'put it over" on teachers, parents and servants, 
then the military school as a separate institution 
may not be so necessary. If our homes and social 
life were arranged for the proper training of the 
young rather than for the pleasure of adults, we 
would be able to give young people the sort of 
training w^hich they need without sending them 
away from home to special training schools. But 
until that day arrives, it would be better to take 
boys who are becoming wholly irresponsible in 
the public schools, and subject them to the dis- 
ciplinary influence of a military school. 

Tenth Question: Shall I Send My Boy to a 
Large University^ — Many persons think that in 
a small college a student will be looked after 
more carefully by members of the faculty than 
he is likely to be in a large university. But in 
most of the universities now plans have been per- 
fected whereby eveiy student is under the ob- 
servation and guidance of a member of the 
faculty. The students, too, are organized for 
the purpose of helping freshmen to adjust them- 
selves to university life in a proper way. 

For a boy who is eager of mind, who has 
strength of character, and who is reasonably seri- 



252 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

ous in his interests, there can be no question that 
the large university offers advantages which can- 
not be duplicated in the small college. In the 
university, a good student will be placed in com- 
petition with a great many others of his quality, 
and this will tend to develop whatever of ability 
and stamina he may possess in embryo. Besides, 
he will have an opportunity to emulate men who 
are accomplishing things in every field of en- 
deavor, and he will have open before him an ex- 
ceedingly varied program of activities, which 
should develop his talents whatever they may be. 

The great university, with its freedom and its 
vast opportunities, is the place for the capable 
man; but it presents difficulties and problems for 
the weak or dissipated fellow who requires urging 
and continual guidance to keep him straight. 
Again, the boy who easily loses his head or his 
courage in a crowd ought not to go to the big 
university until he has been well introduced to 
college life in the small college. There are dis- 
tractions in the big school which are not so 
marked in the small, homelike college. At the 
same time, a student in a great university may 
live his life entirely away from all distractions, — 
in the libraries, the laboratories, and the class- 
rooms. 

A boy can go through a big university and have 
no social connections at all, if he does not want 
them. But such a thing would be impossible in 



QUESTIONS FREQUENTLY ASKED 253 

the small college where everyone knows every- 
one else. The recluse, the "dig," the "book 
worm," strange as it may seem, can exist and 
develop better in the big university than in the 
.small college, just as one may be more alone, more 
of a hermit in a great city than in a small town. 

If your boy has abundant energy; if he has 
strength of mind and of character; if he is inde- 
pendent in his thinking and action; if he has 
developed the habit of application to serious 
tasks, then by all means send him to a big uni- 
versity for at least a part of his collegiate course. 

Eleventh Question: Ho2v Can We Train Our 
Young People to Avoid Slang? — Foreigners, 
especially cultivated English people, think we lack 
refinement in our speech. They say we are too 
fond of slang. We are not sensitive to rough 
language. We tolerate crudities and violations 
of good usage which would be impossible among 
cultured people in England. It is said that the 
English language is degenerating in America, and 
in its place is developing an uncouth and even 
offensive speech. 

No one will deny that American speech is un- 
conventional, at any rate, but whether it is rough 
and boorish depends upon one's point of view. 
Some people like the color and picturesqueness 
of our speech. They feel that it is quite har- 
monious with our manners and the characteristics 
of our intellectual and social life. We are an un- 



254 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

conventional people. We have established a new 
type of social life on this continent. Our people 
are free and equal, or at least they think they are. 
We are not moored to the past ; we live in the im- 
mediate present. We are looking forward rather 
than backward. A distingTiished ancestry does 
not impress us. We admire a man for what he 
has done, rather than for what his ancestors were. 
We are a dynamic people. We exalt those who 
make things go. We used once to admire static 
goodness, but those times have passed. Our edu- 
cational system is based from start to finish on 
the principle of action rather than of learning or 
memorizing. We are not searching after "cult- 
ure"; we are striving for capability in the prac- 
tical situations of life. We esteem most highly 
knowledge and training which will make one 
efficient. We have little regard for mere personal 
accomplishment which does not issue in any 
practical achievement. 

Many Persons Enjoy Vigorous Language. — 
Now those who are in sympathy with the domi- 
nant tendencies in American life will admire the 
colorful character of our speech. One can hear 
vigorous men and active women praising and 
using modern terms and phrases coined by 
dynamic persons whose thought and feeling can- 
not well be expressed in conventional and highly 
refined and subdued terms. One can hear per- 
sons say that the conventionalized speech of an 



QUESTIONS FREQUENTLY ASKED 255 

Englishman lacks *' punch" and individuality. It 
is formal, bookish, the result of memorizing 
rather than of originality and initiative. Vigor- 
ous American people appreciate language with 
driving power. They like to be stirred, aroused, 
stimulated by language as they do by lively exer- 
cise and invigorating air. 

The speech of a people is always expressive 
of their social life and their intellectual and 
physical traits. Those who are very conserva- 
tive, among whom there are class distinctions, 
and whose educational system is mainly linguistic, 
and classic at that, will resist innovations in 
speech. Each generation will be trained to use 
the conventional expressions of ancestors. Such 
people will be offended if anyone takes liberties 
with the traditional style of speech. They will 
be shocked when they hear expressions which 
have not been approved by the classic authors, 
or which have not been sanctioned by long usage. 
Again, those who are not vigorous physically 
will not approve of piquant figures of speech. 
Generally speaking, the more energy a people 
have, if it is freely expressed, the more life and 
color will appear in their speech. Speech is thus 
merely a reflection of the vitality and tempera- 
ment of a person or of a nation. 

So it is inevitable that in America we should 
depart in some measure from the speech we have 
inherited from the mother country. Everything 



256 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

is rushing forward at such a pace here that it 
would be impossible for us to be satisfied with 
a language developed in a time when there were 
no automobiles, when there were no trusts, when 
most people never went more than a hundred 
miles away from the place where they were born, 
when trains did not exceed the speed limit of 
twenty miles an hour, when only the ''elite" re- 
ceived a higher education. If Americans were 
confined to the precise modes of expression in 
use two hundred years ago, they would not be 
hurtling forward in every activity of life as they 
are now doing; they would think and conduct 
themselves as people did two hundred years ago. 
New Speech Is Coined in High Schools and Col- 
leges. — It is a significant fact that our colleges 
and universities, and to some extent our high 
schools, are mints for the coining of new words 
and phrases. The w^riter recently investigated the 
unusual, unconventional speech in a high school 
with an enrollment of eleven hundred pupils. 
About nine hundred sixty expressions were found 
in common usage which could not be located in the 
dictionary. In the same city is a large university. 
It is well-nigh impossible to keep up with the new 
phrases which are being coined on the campus of 
this institution. The students come from every 
section of the country, and have had the regula- 
tion elementary and high-school training. The 
teachers in the preparatory schools have aimed to 



QUESTIONS FREQUENTLY ASKED 257 

teach the conventional proprieties in speech, as 
well as in writing ; they have not endorsed any of 
the innovations in language. And yet these stu- 
dents enjoy inventing and using new and colorful 
terms and expressions. The schools have not 
been able to develop resistance to the subtle influ- 
ences of American life which have played upon 
these six thousand students and made them fond 
of dynamic speech, because this seems to express 
their attitude toward life more completely than 
the less picturesque and stimulating phrases of 
their ancestors. 

The generation now on the boards is especially 
prolific in the coining of new terms. One rarely 
sees a parent who can keep abreast of his chil- 
dren in the use of the present-day American 
tongue. Children are going the pace to-day in 
language as they are in everything else. They 
are probably not going faster or farther in speech 
than they are in dress, say, or in the dance, and 
the like. To repeat, — the language of a people is 
expressive of their every-day life. If they are 
unconventional in conduct they will be unconven- 
tional in speech ; and the principle is universal in 
its application. 

Slang Is Offensive to Most Persons. — Most 
adults probably would like to have the speech of 
young people to-day a little more refined than it 
is. Even if an adult enjoys dynamic, high-colored 
figures of speech, he is still likely to be offended 



258 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

by some of the new terms introduced by the boys, 
and the girls as well, who are now in the schools. 
As a rule, slang is offensive to grown persons; 
but by slang is meant gutter language, used by 
those who lack fine or delicate feeling in respect 
to any matter. In a true sense, slang is always 
vulgar. It takes its rise from vulgar objects and 
experiences. 

A distinction should be made between slang and 
new terms and expressions which are in accord 
with the spirit of the language. To illustrate: in 
the last presidential election the term "hyphen- 
ated Americans" came into general use. It will 
probably abide in the language. It is not an of- 
fensive term. It is a figurative expression which 
is a real contribution to the every-day vocabulary 
of the American people. This should not be 
called slang. Again, the term ''pacifist" was 
coined recently, and undoubtedly it will be in- 
corporated into the language. There is no reason 
why it should not remain as a part of our speech. 
''Bull Moose" is another figurative term which 
has met a real need, and has been seized upon by 
all vigorous Americans. One could mention many 
other terms which have been coined during heated 
political campaigns to express ideas which could 
not be adequately conveyed by conventionalized 
terms and phrases. Probably every adult has 
used the terms "waving the bloody shirt" and 
"carpet-bagger" and "copper-head" and "mend- 



QUESTIONS FREQUENTLY ASKED 259 

ing his fences" and ''jingo" and others like 
these. To many persons these seem age-worn, 
conservative expressions, but they have all been 
introduced into the language very recently. 

Words That Are Out of Harmony with Our 
Language. — Contrast with these terms some 
others that are seeking admission into our lan- 
guage, but that are out of harmony with the 
spirit of it. Such a term as "guy," for instance, 
which is constantly used by young people, has 
nothing to commend it. It ought to be eliminated. 
''Stewed," "soused," "half-shot," "jagged," 
and the like for an intoxicated man are all rough, 
gutter terms, invented by people accustomed to 
an uncouth life. "The head push," "chief 
squeeze," "the whole cheese," and similar terms 
were also developed and are used by persons who 
have no delicacy of feeling, and who do not rise 
above the rough and more or less sordid things of 
life. Again, terms like "mut," "bone-head," 
"vamoose," and all the rest lack the essential 
characteristics of colorful, dynamic speech. Un- 
fortunately these innovations, seized upon by 
some newspapers and theatrical people and given 
wide publicity, are taken up by the young, and 
some of them have been forced into the language 
against the wish of the great majority of Ameri- 
cans. Almost any term which one constantly 
hears is likely to creep into his speech, unless he 
has reached the stage where his vocabularly is 



260 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

thoroughly fixed, and so is no longer plastic with 
respect to new terms or phrases. 

Imitation the Chief Factor. — Can the young 
be trained so that they will use polite, but at the 
same time dynamic, speech! The chief factor in 
determining one's vocabulary is imitation. If 
one could take any adult's vocabulary and trace 
its history in detail, he would find that at least 
ninety-nine out of every hundred of the terms, 
figures of speech and idioms used have been 
gained from imitation. At first glance some 
readers may think that one 's speech is determined 
very largely by his reading, but this is not the 
case. Much of what children read has no influ- 
ence whatever on their speech. For instance, 
pupils who are reading Scott in the seventh grade 
are not influenced appreciably by his terms or 
expressions. Hardly any of the classical writers 
read in the schools make an impression on the 
speech of the young. The language used in clas- 
sical books seems very remote to most young peo- 
ple from the language of every-day life. If they 
heard language in the school, in their homes, or 
on the street like that employed by Milton, let us 
say, then their reading of this author might in- 
fluence their speech ; but this is rarely if ever the 
case. 

The teaching of grammar in the schools exerts 
but little influence upon a child's every-day lan- 
guage. A child's speech is formed where speak- 



QUESTIONS FREQUENTLY ASKED 261 

ing is going on, — that is to say, in his crowd. As 
his set speaks, so will the individual speak. If a 
child's associates speak ungrammatically — if they 
say, '^I seen him," for instance — the chances are 
the child will use the same expression sooner or 
later. On the other hand, if his associates speak 
correctly, the child will certainly imitate them in 
the long run. Instruction in the home or the 
school cannot accomplish much by way of coun- 
teracting ungrammatical or unlovely speech in 
the group. 

This all means that in order to make the speech 
of an individual child polite, while at the same 
time forceful, he must have companions whose 
speech possesses these qualities. No phase of 
one's life is so deeply influenced by the group as 
is his speech, because it is learned unconsciously 
for the most part. This it is that makes it prac- 
tically impossible for the individual to rise above 
the level of his group in this respect, 

A Child Speaks as His Associates Speak. — A 
child is influenced more largely by his associates 
than by his parents, simply because he imitates 
those who are on his level of development, and 
who have kindred interests. One can see children 
everywhere who hear refined speech in their 
homes, but who themselves have a rough, slangy 
tongue. Their speech is full of violent expletives, 
and all their talk smacks of the gutter. Why? 
Because they run with children whose speech has 



262 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

been formed on the street, and true to nature they 
imitate their kind. Their parents are not of their 
kind; they are more or less remote from them — 
some more so than others. It is only playmates 
who much influence one another. When people 
play together they are in a plastic relation to- 
ward one another, and quickly take up each 
other's traits. Children are not as a rule in a 
plastic attitude toward parents or instructors, and 
so they do not assimilate their characteristics 
readily. 

Often one sees parents who are distressed at 
their children's speech, but all they do to change 
it is to give them formal lectures occasionally. 
This is not only a useless, but it is an irritating 
method. Probably not once in a hundred cases 
will any good come from such methods. If a 
parent does not like his children's speech, he must 
change their companions, or else he must endure 
harsh, ugly terms and phrases that grate upon 
his sensibilities. 

The schools to-day are doing more than they 
did formerly to keep the speech of the young rea- 
sonably refined, while indulging their passion for 
color and fire and spirit. In any good school now 
the pupils do most of the talking. They do not 
simply answer ''yes" or "no" to questions, but 
they stand on their feet and discuss topics. They 
may occupy four or five minutes at a time in talk- 
ing on a theme which is proposed. The teacher 



QUESTIONS FREQUENTLY ASKED 263 

does not hold the pupils down to rigid, conven- 
tional, schoolroom language, but gives large free- 
dom for the use of strong, picturesque expres- 
sions, provided they are not offensive. In this 
way an outlet is given for the strong, dynamic 
feeling of the young in expressions which will not 
irritate sensitive ears. Here is a great oppor- 
tunity for each teacher in American schools. The 
teacher can do more than can the parent to direct 
the ebullient life of the young into proper lin- 
guistic channels. 



CHAPTER IX 

BOOKS FOR PARENTS AND TEACHERS 

The following books are designed for persons 
who are responsible for the care and culture of 
the young. They have been selected from a large 
amount of literature dealing with child nature 
and education primarily because of their modern 
view point (even though a few of them were writ- 
ten long ago), and also because of their concrete, 
simple and attractive method of discussing the 
topics which they treat. Most of them can be read 
will profit and pleasure by those who have not 
pursued courses in psychology and related 
sciences, and these are designated by stars. The 
books have been grouped according to the phases 
of child nature and education to which they sever- 
ally give special attention; but this grouping is 
only approximately accurate, since, while the 
majority of the books treat the period of the teens 
in particular, they nevertheless give some atten- 
tion to other periods. 



264 



BOOKS FOR PARENTS AND TEACHERS 



265 



A GENERAL VIEW OF CHILD NATURE AND TRAINING 

Houghton Mifflin Co. 

National Congress of 

Mothers 
D. Appleton & Co. 
Small Maynard & Co. 
Badger 

Henry Holt & Co. 
J. B. Lippincott Co 

D. Appleton & Co. 
Row Peterson & Co. 

Funk & Wagnalls 

G. P. Putnam Sons 

Houghton Mifflin Co. 

C. C. Berchard & Co. 
Baker & Taylor 



*Abbot 


On the Training of Par- 




ents 


*Birney 


The Child in Home, 




School and State 


*Forbush 


The Coming Generation 


*Gillman 


Concerning Children 


*Groszraann 


The Career of the Child 


*Gruenberg 


Sons and Daughters 


*Gruenberg 


Your Child To-day and 




To-morrow 


Hall 


Adolescence 


*Hallam 


Studies in Child De- 




velopment 


Jacoby 


Child Training as an 




Exact Science 


*Key 


The Century of the 




Child 


Kirkpatrlck 


The Individual in the 




Making 


*Loti 


The Story of a Child 


*Winterburn 


From the Child's Stand- 




point 



PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT AND WELFARE 



*Allen 


Civics and Health 


*Allen 


Home, School and Vaca- 




tion 


Ayres 


Open-Air Schools 


*Bryant 


School Feeding 


Burks 


Health and the School 


Curtis 


Play and Recreation 


* Hutchinson 


We and Our Children 


-T>ee 


Play In Education 


Offner 


Mental Fatigue 


*Oppenheim 


Care of the Child In 




Health 


*0'Shea & 


Health Habits 


Kellogg 




*0'Shea & 


Health and Cleanliness 


Kellogg 





Ginn & Company 
Houghton Mifflin Co. 

Doubleday, Page & Co. 
J. B. Lippincott Co. 
D. Appleton & Co. 
Ginn & Co. 

Doubleday, Page & Co. 
The MacmlUan Co. 
Warwick & York 
The Macmillan Co. 

The Macmillan Co. 

The Macmillan Co. 



266 THE TREND OF THE TEENS 

*0'Shea & The Body in Health The Macmillan Co. 

Kellogg 
*Patrick Psychology of Relaxa- Houghton Mifflin Co. 

tion 
*Rapeer Educational Hygiene Chas. Scribner's Sons 

Rowe The Physical Nature of The Macmillan Co. 

the Child and How to 
Study It 
Sadler Physiology of Faith and A. C. McClurg & Co. 

Fear 
Stearns etal Types of Schools for Bobbs-Merrill Co. 

Boys 
Terman The Hygiene of the Houghton Mifflin Co. 

School Child 
*TyIer Growth and Education Houghton Mifflin Co. 

C 

INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT AND WELFARE 

*Burbank The Training of the Hu- The Century Co. 

man Plant 
Colvln & Human Behavior The Macmillan Co. 

Bagley 
*James Tallis to Teachers Henry Holt & Co. 

*Kirkpatricli Fundamentals of Child The Macmillan Co. 

Study 
*Swift Learning by Doing Bobbs-I\Ierrill Co. 

*Terraan The Measurement of In- Houghton Mifflin Co. 

telligence 

D 

EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND WELFARE 

*Cabot What Men Live By Houghton Mifflin Co. 

*0'Shea Social Development and Houghton Mifflin Co. 

Education 

Sadler Worry and Nervousness A. C. McClurg & Co. 

Seashore Psychology in Daily Life D. Appleton & Co. 



BOOKS FOR PARENTS AND TEACHERS 



267 



E 



MORAL DEVELOPMENT AND TRAINING 



Adler 


Moral Instruction of 




Children 


*Addaras 


The Spirit of Youth and 




the City Streets 


Bagley 


School Discipline 


*Cabot 


Ethics for Children 


Porbush 


The Coming Generation 


George 


The Junior Republic 


Griggs 


Moral Education 


*Healy 


Honesty 


Holmes 


The Principles of Char- 




acter Making 


Morehouse 


The Discipline of the 




School 


*Mumford 


The Dawn of Character 


*Piiffer 


The Boy and His Gang 


Rousseau 


6mile 


Rugh 


Moral Training in the 




Public School 


Sadler 


Moral Instruction and 




Training in the Schools 


*Schoff 


The Wayward Child 


Sharp 


Education for Character 


Sisson 


Essentials of Character 


*Spencer 


Education (Chap. on 




Moral Instruction) 


*Weiraar 


The Way to the Heart 




of the Pupil 



D. Appleton & Co. 

The Macraillan Co. 

The Macmillan Co. 
Houghton Mifflin Co. 
D. Appleton & Co. 
D. Appleton & Co. 
B. W. Huebsch 
Bobbs-Merrill Co. 
J. B. Lippincott Co. 

D. C. Heath 

Longmans Green & Co. 
Houghton Mifflin Co. 
D. Appleton & Co. 
Glnn & Company 

Longmans Green & Co. 

Bobbs-Merrlll Co. 
Bobbs-Merrill Co. 
The Macmillan Co. 
Hurst & Co. 

The Macmillan Co. 



F 



SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT AND TRAINING 



Cooley 

*Fiske 

*Fisher 
*Forbush 

Groos 
*King 

King 



Human Nature and the Chas. Scribner's Sons 

Social Order 
Boy Life and Self-Gov 

ernment 
Self-Reliance 
The Boy Problem 
The Play of Man 
The High School Age 
Social Aspects of Edu 

cation 



Y. M. C. A. Associated 

Press 
Bobbs-Merrill Co. 
The Pilgrim Press 
D. Appleton & Co. 
Bobbs-Merrill Co. 
The Macmillan Co. 



268 



THE TREND OF THE TEENS 



Mangold 
O'Shea 

*Scott 
Willing & 

Elson 
*0'Shea 

Parsons 



Phelps 

Ruediger 

*Spencer 
Weeks 

Weeks 
* Wilson 



Child Problems 

Social Development and 
Education 

Social Education 

Social Games and Group 
Dances 

Dynamic Factors in Ed- 
ucation 

Children's Gardens for 
Pleasure, Health and 
Education 

Teaching in School and 
College 

The Principles of Edu- 
cation 

Education 

The Education of To- 
morrow 

The People's School 

Motivation of School 
Work 



The Macmillan Co. 
Houghton Mifflin Co. 

Ginn & Co. 

J. B. Lippincott & Co. 

The Macmillan Co. 

Sturgis & Walton 

The Macmillan Co. 

Houghton Mifflin Co. 

Hurst & Co. 
Sturgis & Walton 

Houghton Mifflin Co. 
Houghton Mifflin Co. 



G 



SCHOOL AND HOME EDUCATION 



*Andrews 


The Girl of To-morrow 




in "The School of To- 




morrow" 


Bancroft 


Games for the Play- 




ground, Home, School 




and Gymnasium 


*Berle 


The School in the Home 


Bourne 


The Gary Schools 


Cook & 


The Child and His Spell- 


O'Shea 


ing 


*Dean 


The Bov of To-morrow 




in "The School of To- 




morrow" 


Dewey 


The School and Society 


*Dewey 


The Schools of To-mor- 




row 


*Fisher 


A Montessori Mother 


Hodge 


Nature Study and Life 


*Holraes 


Backward Children 



Doubleday, Page & Co. 



The Macmillan Co. 



Moffat, Yard & Co. 
Houghton Mifflin Co. 
Bobbs-Merrill Co. 

Doubleday, Page & Co. 



University of Chicago 

Press 
The Macmillan Co. 

Henry Holt & Co. 
Ginn & Company 
Bobbs-Merrill Co. 



BOOKS FOR PARENTS AND TEACHERS 



269 



Johnson 

*Kirkpatrick 
Locke 

McMurry 
*0'Shea 

O'Shea 
(Editor) 



Education by Plays and 
Games 

The Use of Money 

Some Thoughts Con- 
cerning Education 

How to Study 

Every-day Problems in 
Teaching 

The world Book: Or- 
ganized Knowledge in 
Story and Picture 
(contains 120 articles 
on teaching), 10 vols. 



Ginn & Company 

Bobbs-Merrill Co. 
Cambridge University 

Press 
Houghton Mifflin Co. 
Bobbs-Merrlll Co. 

Hanson Bellows Co. 



H 



RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 



Bushnell 


Christian Nurture 


Coe 


Education in Religion 




and Morals 


♦Hodses 


Training of Children in 




Religion 


*Moxley 


Girlhood and Character 


Starbuck 


The Psychology of Re- 




ligion 



Chas. Scribner's Sons 
Fleming H. Revell Co. 

D. Appleton & Co. 

Abingdon Press 
Chas. Scribner's Sons 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 



*Davis 

Gilette 
*Hart 



Hollings- 
worth 
*Laselle & 

Wiley 

*i\IcKeever 

*McKeever 

Snedden, 

Weeks & 

Cubberly 



Vocational and Moral Ginn & Company 

Guidance 
Vocational Education 
Educational Resources 

of Village and Rural 

Communities 
Vocational Psychology 



American Book Co. 
The Macmillan Co. 



Vocations for Girls 

Farm Boys and Girls 
Training the Boy 
Vocational Education 



D. Appleton & Co. 

Houghton Mifflin Co. 

The Macmillan Co. 
The Macmillan Co. 
Houghton Mifflin Co. 



270 



THE TREND OF THE TEENS 



CHILD LIFE AND EDUCATION UNDER VARYING 
CONDITIONS 



Bigelow 
*Bloomfield 

*Carney 

Hall & Betts 
*Hall 

Hutton 

*Johnston. 

O'Shea & 
Kellogg 
Scripture 
Thorndike 



Sex Education 
The Vocational 

ance of Youth 
Country Life and 

Country School 
Better Rural Schools 
Youth, Its Education, 

Regimen and Hygiene 
A Boy I Knew, and Four 

Dogs 
Home Occupations for 

Boys and Girls 
Making the Most of Life 



The Macmillan Co. 
Guid- Houghton Mifflin Co. 

the Row, Peterson & Co. 



Bobbs-Merrill Co. 
D. Appleton & Co. 

Harper & Bros. 

G. W. Jacobs & Co. 

The Macmillan Co. 



Stuttering and Lisping 
Individuality 

K 



The Macmillan Co. 
Houghton Mifflin Co. 



GENERAL TRAITS AND NEEDS OF CHILDHOOD 



Ayres 

Bates & Orr 
*Gibson 



Laggards in Our Schools 
Pageants and Pageantry 
Camping for Boys 



of 



*Gulick The Healthful Art 

Dancing 
Hartt The People at Play 

Healy The Individual Delin- 

quent 
*Holmes The Conservation of the 

Child 
*Herts The Children's Educa- 

tional Theatre 
Needham Folk Festivals 

*Perry Wider Use of the School 

Plant 
Shields The Making and Un- 

making of a Dullard 
Simons & OrrDramatization 
*Ward The Social Center 

*Welsh Stories Children Love 



Survey Associates, Inc. 

Ginn & Company 

Y. M. C. A. Association 

Press 
Doubleday, Page & Co. 

Houghton Mifflin Co. 
Little, Brown & Co. 

J. P. Lippincott Co. 

Harper &, Bros. 

B. W. Huebsch 
Survey Associates, Inc. 

Catholic Educational 

Press 
Scott, Forsman & Co. 
D. Appleton & Co. 
Dodge Publishing Co. 



INDEX 

Adolescence, a critical period in a girl's development.. 70-72 
(See adolescent phenomena.) 

Adolescent autobiography 19-20 

Adolescent phenomena 15-21 

growing pains 16 

the lungs and brain as intlueuced by adolescent 

growth 16 

moodiness in adolescence 17 

Maudsley, Clouston, Starr, Marrow, Christopher, on 

adolescence 17 

La Fetra, quoted 18 

Coe, quoted 18-19 

adolescent autobiography 19-20 

Marie Bashkirtsefl's Journal 19 

Mill's reminiscences 20 

Tolstoy's autobiography 20 

Loti, Jeffries 20 

criminal tendencies in adolescents 20-21 

Swift, quoted 21 

Adventure, in a boy's life 44-45 

American girl, especially favored in respect to restric- 
tions 70 

Amorousness, in a school 100-103 

comradeship, rather than 103-104 

Artificial customs, the pressure of on girls in schools. . 87-89 

Artificial restrictions, girls are breaking with 68-69 

Athletics, in high school 30-31 

injury from 31-32 

Attractiveness, and a girl's education 83 

Autocracy, on the part of parents 201-203 

Bacon, quoted 14 

Barker, views on making children independent of 

parents and home 207 

Bashkirtseff, Marie, journal 19 

"Bawling out," as a method of governing the young 216-218 

271 



272 INDEX 

Boy favorites, among girls 99-100 

Boy life, in small towns 39-44 

boys' needs not provided for in schools 41 

small towns encourage loafing 42 

homes are not made attractive for boys 43-45 

Boy problems 38-64 

"breaking the law," 38-39 

boy life in small towns 41 

new times bring new problems 42 

why will boys not stay at home? 43 

a boy loves adventure 44-45 

the boy who is "picked on" 45-47 

boys need comrades not disciplinarians 47-48 

"scrapping" 49-51 

teasing 52-54 

cruelty 54-55 

the passion for mastery 55-56 

cooperative games and plays as a cure for plaguing. 57 

experiences that test courage and endurance 58-62 

the call of the swimming pool 62-64 

Boys, appearance of puberty in 221 

conforming to reasonable rules 249-251 

girl associates 113-115 

innnature, maturing and mature 222 

indifference to cleanliness 226-227 

appearance of aesthetic interests 227-229 

Individualistic period 222 

in need of contact with virile men during 

adolescence 171 

need of experiences that develop courage and 

endurance 61 

not treated in refined way as compared with girls. 120 

passion for experience in water 63 

self-government among 207-209 

should be given freedom to go about in the world. .200-201 

subjection to vulgar and obscene suggestion 119-120 

value of military school for 247-251 

Boys' schools, simple life in 143 

Brain, as Influenced by adolescent growth 16 

Budget making, necessary for happiness in married life. 132-134 
Budget system, necessary in order to relieve fathers 
from burden of resisting children's appeal for 
money 182-184 



INDEX 273 

Chaperoning, when necessary 104-106 

Child training, a source of conflict in married life 136-137 

Chivalry, in later youth 117-119 

Choosing an occupation, helping children in 232-234 

how children are influenced by a parent's occupa- 
tion 234-237 

changing views with development 236-238 

Christopher 17 

Chronological age 220 

Cleanliness, indifference of boys to 226-228 

Clothes, problem of in a girl's education 85-87 

Clouston *. 17 

Coe, quoted 18-19 

Co-education, benefits of 112-113 

College, as compared with large university, for boys. . .251-253 
Compensating factors, for the minor role played by 

fathers 171-173 

Competitive games, as a substitute for fighting 50-51 

Comrades, needed by boys 47-48 

Concentration, during adolescence 72-73 

Conflict, between parents and children 190-192 

Constructive treatment, necessary to remedy dance evil . 109-110 

Continuation schools, training in for married life 137 

Cooperation, in the government of the young 218-219 

Cooperative games and plays, as substitutes for teasing. 57-58 

Courage, experiences that test 58-61 

Criminal tendencies, in adolescents 20-21 

Crucial age 13-37 

youth among primitive people 14-15 

familiar adolescent phenomena 15-17 

first effect of adolescent development 17 

adolescent moodiness 17-19 

adolescent strain and stress as portrayed in auto- 
biography 19-20 

criminal tendencies in adolescents 20-21 

why boys leave school early 21-24 

the problem of over-work in the school 24-26 

the increasing nervous strain in life 26-28 

a typical case of over-strain in school 28 

not less work but less waste 28-29 

practical means of avoiding over-strain 29-30 

high school athletics 30-31 

Injury from athletics 31-32 



274 INDEX 

physical training by proxy 33 

inter-scholastic competition 34-35 

physical training of girls 35-37 

Dancing, the problem of 106-111 

late hours injurious 107-108 

always a pressing problem 108-109 

constructive treatment will alone euro evil of 109-110 

in relation to comradeship and sex feeiin;^ 104 

Democracy, in dealing with the young 189-190 

democratic way the happiest way 192-194 

Diet, as affecting temper in marriecf life 128-130 

Disciplinarians, not needed by boys 47-48 

Distractions, in American life 141-167 

the high cost of simplicity in education 141-144 

distraction from intellectual tasks 144-146 

youth and the moving picture theater 146-149 

censorship of pictures for the young 149-151 

the value of moving pictures 151-152 

team work between home and school 152-153 

young people should study at home 153-155 

the telephone as a distractive factor 155-156 

parents often encourage distraction 156-159 

the tonic effect of mastery 159-161 

the home can often develop habits of application. .161-164 

some advantages of school training 164-165 

sending pupils away to school 165-167 

Eastman, on the treatment of adolescent Indian boys.. 15 
Economic strain and stress, a prominent factor in mar- 
ried life 130-133 

Education, essential to a happy marriage 127 

Endurance, experiences that test 58-61 

Euripides, quoted 13 

Exuberance, of youth 194 

Fashion, the demands of on girls in school and college. 89-90 

Father, role of, in the training of youth 168-188 

the fatherless children of America 168-169 

who are moulding the character of the young? 169-171 

compensating factors 171-173 

types of fathers and sons 173-179 

fathers as companions of their boys 179-184 



INDEX 275 

the father as bread-winner only 184-185 

the bread-winner may become a boor 185-187 

expensive luxuries usually disrupt a family 187-188 

Fatherless children, of America 168-169 

Fathers, as bread-winners only 184-185 

likely to become boorish 185-186 

as pain givers only in their families 188 

as companions of their sons 179-182 

as task masters and policemen 180 

as chums with their boys 180-181 

as companions with their daughters 180-181 

Fathers and sons, types of 173-179 

Fighting, how to prevent 50-51 

punishment for 51 

Foreword '^'^^ 

Girl problems 65-94 

restrictions on the girl's activities 65-67 

intellectual restrictions 67-68 

restrictions on speech 68 

girls are breaking artificial restrictions 68-70 

the American girl is especially favored 70 

adolescence a critical period in a girl's life 70-72 

adolescent girls will not concentrate on dull tasks. . 72-73 

arrest in a girl's mental development 73-74 

the non-social girls 75-78 

sociability may develop with age 77-78 

the higher education of girls 79-94 

the Phi Beta Kappa society and the college girl 79-81 

women leading in scholarship 80-81 

girl students will not be denied 81-82 

woman must win by personal accomplishment.... 82-85 

education and personal attractiveness 83-85 

the problem of clothes 85-87 

pressure of artificial customs 87-89 

reduce the demands of fashion 89-90 

the social life of a girl in school and in college 90-91 

disadvantages of secret societies 91-93 

should a girl join a sorority? 93-94 

Girl students, insistent upon recognition and rights 81-82 

Girls activities, restrictions on 65-70 

intellectual restrictions 67 



276 INDEX 

restrictions on speech 68 

girls are breaking artificial restrictions 68-69 

the American girl is especially favored 70 

Good comradeship, essential for successful marriage... 125 
Government, of youth, by quiet self-controlled methods. 214-216 

"by bawling out" 216-218 

by cooperation 218-219 

by nagging, contrasted with self-government 212-214 

Grit, not usually developed in city boy 61 

Growing pains 16 

Gymnastic activities, as a substitute for fighting 50 

Health, fundamental requisite for happy married life.. 128 

Heart, as influenced by adolescent growth 16 

High school, not a breeding place for vice 111-113 

benefits of co-education 112-113 

Home, when a boy should leave 203-204 

loosening home ties 204-206 

making children independent of 206-207 

Home and school, team work between 152-153 

Home study 153-159 

community practice In respect to 154 

arrangement to encourage 154-155 

distraction from telephone 155-156 

parents often encourage distraction 156-159 

Home ties, loosening of 204-206 

making children independent of parents and home. 206-207 

Imitation, chief factor in determining speech of chil- 
dren 260-263 

Injury, through athletics 31-32 

Intellectual tasks, distraction from in American life. . .144-146 

Intellectual restrictions, on girls 67 

Interest, in opposite sex 115-116 

cannot be forced 115-116 

Interests, in an adolescent girl's life 72-73 

Inter-scholastic competition 34-35 

Jeffries , 20 

La Fetra, quoted 18 

Late hours, encourage morbid amorous feeling among 

boys and girls 107-108 



INDEX 277 

Law-breaking, by boys 38-39 

Less waste, not less work 28-29 

Loti 20 

Lungs, as influenced by adolescent growth 16 

Luxuries, likely to disrupt a family 187 

Manual training, influence on a boy's usefulness around 

the home 238-241 

as a means of making money 241-244 

Marriage, preparation for 121-140 

fundamental requirements 122-125 

good comradeship essential 125-126 

the better the education the happier the married life. 126-127 

health as a fundamental requisite 127-128 

diet and temper 128-130 

economic strain and stress 130-133 

mutual understanding and appreciation 133-134 

talk about duties and burdens can be overdone 135 

the treatment of children a source of conflict 136-137 

training for marriage in continuation schools 137-138 

special instruction relating to married life 138-140 

Married life ( See Marriage) 

Marrow 17 

Mastery, the passion for 55 

tonic effect of 159-163 

Maudsley 17 

Meals, definite periods for 230-231 

Mental development in girls, arrest in 73-74 

Military regimen, in schools for boys 248-249 

Military school, value for boys 247-251 

Mill, reminiscences 20 

Moodiness, in adolescence 17 

Mother's Magazine 7 

Moulding forces, in the development of the young 169-170 

Moving pictures, value of for youth 151-152 

censorship of 152 

(See moving picture theater) 
Moving picture theater, and the development of sex 

feeling 102 

influence upon youth 146-152 

moving pictures indulge passion for daring, hazard- 
ous adventure 147 

they often suggest lewdness and vulgarity 149 



278 INDEX 

censorship of motion pictures 149-151 

the value of moving pictures 151-152 

Mutual understanding and appreciation, essential for 

happy marriage 133-134 

Muir, John, quoted 62 

National Congress of Mothers 7 

Nervous strain, in modern life 26-28 

Non-social girl 74-76 

should not be coerced into social activities 76-77 

sociability may develop with age 77-78 

Occupation, choosing an (See Choosing an Occupation) 

Optimistic age 116-117 

Over-eating, danger of 231-232 

Over-strain, causes of in hi:,h school 25-26 

"parties" 26 

means of avoiding 29-30 

due to improper program in school 28 

Over-work, in the high school 25-28 

physicians of France, Italy, and America on 125 

Parental autocracy, concrete instances of 201-203 

Parents, making children independent of 206-207 

Parent-Teacher Associations 7 

"Parties," as cause of over-strain in high school 26 

Personal accomplishment, woman's chief concern 82-85 

Physical training, by proxy 33-34 

Physicians of France, Italy and America, on over-work 

in the high school 25 

Physiological age 220 

"PIcked-on" individual 45-47 

Plaguing (See Teasing, Scrapping) 

"Pomp-Pouip Pull-Away," as a substitute for fighting. . . 50 

Preservation of health, indifference of adolescence to.. 225-226 

Professional athletics, in schools 244-247 

Puberty, appearance of in boys and in girls 220-223 

Punishment, for fighting 51 

Refinement, of girls as compared with boys 119-121 

Reformer, the problem of 103 

Regular programs, salutary influence of 196-198 

avoiding irritation and conflict by 198-200 



INDEX 279 

Restlessness, why so marked between fourteenth and 

sixteenth years 223-225 

Rhinehart, Mary Roberts, quoted 191 

Romantic ideals, in later youtu 117-119 

Scholarship, women leading in 80-81 

School gynmasium, to be used for all pupils, not for 

athletic teams alone 246-247 

School training, advantages of 164-165 

away from home 165-167 

"Scrapping" ' 49-51 

Secret societies, disadvantages of in girls' schools 91-92 

Self-government, among boys 207-209 

in public schools in England 208 

the fagging system 209-210 

as a training in government 210-212 

Self-made programs, parents should respect a child's. .194-196 

Sentimental relations, between boys and girls 98-99 

Seven ages of man 13 

Shakespeare, quoted 14 

Simplicity in education, the high cost of 141-144 

Slang 253-263 

how to train young people to avoid 253-254 

many persons enjoy vigorous language 254-256 

new terms coined in high schools and colleges 256-257 

slang is offensive to most adults 257-259 

words that are out of harmony with our language. . 259 

imitation the chief factor 260-263 

Small towns, boy life in 39-44 

schools in 41-42 

homes in, as adapted to needs of boys 43 

Sociability, may develop with age 77-78 

Social life, of a girl in school and college 90-91 

disadvantages of secret societies 91-93 

should a girl join a sorority? 93-94 

Social relations, between boys and girls 95-98 

Sorority, should a girl join 93-94 

Speech, restrictions in the use of by girls 68 

Starr 17 

Suggestion, in the development of sex feeling 102 

amorousness the chief topic of conversation in 
many communities 101-102 



280 INDEX 

boys exposed to vulgar and obscene 119-120 

girls protected from vulgar and obscene 120 

Swimming, antidote for tense nerves 63 

as a prophylactic for mischief and crime 64 

Swimming pool, the call of 62 

Swift, quoted 21 

Teasing , 51 

not cruel from standpoint of teaser 53 

the point of view of the actor and the on-looker dif- 
ferent in every case of 54-55 

mastery, the passion for 55 

Telephone, as a cause of distraction 155-156 

Tender passion, appearance of 95-140 

social relations of boys and girls 95-98 

the beginning of sentimental relations 98-99 

the kind of boy who attracts the girl 99-100 

amorousness in a school 100-103 

comradeship rather than amorousness in the early 

teens 103-104 

when chaperoning is necessary 104-106 

the problem of the dance 106-107 

late hours Injurious 107-108 

the dance problem is always a pressing one 108-109 

constructive treatment alone will correct the evil. 109-111 

the high school not a breeding place for vice 111-112 

benefits of co-education 112-113 

should a mother pick out a boy's or girl's associ- 
ates? 113-114 

how guidance can be exercised 114-115 

interest in the opposite sex 115 

interest in the opposite sex cannot be forced 115-116 

the optimistic age 116-117 

romance and chivalry in later youth 117-119 

are girls more refined by nature than boys? 119-121 

preparation for the great adventure 121-122 

fundamental requirements 122-125 

good comradeship is essential 125-126 

the better the education the happier the married 

life 126-127 

health is a fundamental requisite 127-128 

diet and temper 128-130 

economic strain and stress 130-133 



INDEX 281 

mutual understanding and appreciation 133-134 

talk about duties and burdens can be over-done. . 135 
the treatment of children a source of conllict. .. .136-137 

training in continuation schools 137-138 

special instruction relating to married life 138-140 

Tense umscles, as a cause of restlessness 224-225 

Tolstoy, autobiography 20 

"Tug of War," as a substitute for fighting 50 

Unhealthful eating habits, how to control 228-230 

assigning definite periods for meals 230-231 

danger of over-eating 231-232 

.University, the value of for boys as compared with 

small college 251-253 

Woman, must win by personal accomplishment 82-83 

Youth, among primitive people 14-15 

the government of 189-219 

democracy in dealing with 189-190 

the chief cause of conflict between parents and 

children 190-192 

the democratic way is the happiest way 192-194 

youth is exuberant 194 

respect a child's self-made programs 194-196 

the salutary inlluence of a regular program 196-198 

avoiding irritation and conflict 198-200 

let the boy try his wings 200-201 

a concrete Instance of parental autocracy 201-203 

when a boy should lea-ve home 203-204 

loosening home ties 204-206 

make children independent of parents and home. . . .206-207 

self-government among boys 207-209 

the fagging system 209-210 

training in government 210-212 

government by nagging 212-214 

a different method of government 214-216 

government by "bawling out" 216-218 

government by cooperation 218-219 



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